The German-born Handel, after spending some of his early career composing operas and other pieces in Italy, settled in London, where in 1711 he had brought Italian opera for the first time with his opera
Rinaldo. A tremendous success,
Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. In 1719, Handel was appointed
music director of an organisation called the Royal Academy of Music (unconnected with the present day London conservatoire), a company under royal charter to produce Italian operas in London. Handel was not only to compose operas for the company but hire the star singers, supervise the orchestra and musicians, and adapt operas from Italy for London performance. Handel had composed numerous Italian operas for the Academy, with varying degrees of success; some were enormously popular. The castrato Senesino and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni had appeared in a succession of Handel operas for the Academy (he was not the only composer who composed operas for the company) most of which had been successful with audiences, and in 1726 the directors of the Academy brought over another internationally renowned singer, Faustina Bordoni, to add to the company's attractions. The two
prima donnas had appeared in continental European countries in operas together without incident, but in London they developed rival groups of fans that interrupted the performances with rowdy displays of partisanship for one lady or another. This came to a climax on 6 June 1727 during a performance at the King's Theatre of
Astianatte by
Giovanni Bononcini with both singers onstage and royalty (thirteen-year-old
Princess Caroline) in the audience. Fist fights and disorder between rival groups of fans broke out in the audience and the two sopranos exchanged insults and came to blows onstage. The rest of the opera was cut, the performers going straight to the short final chorus, and the scandal was gleefully repeated in the newspapers, in satirical skits on other stages, and in mock-heroic verse, bringing the entire form of Italian opera into a certain amount of disrepute in London. which combined with declining audience numbers caused at least in part by the ridicule brought upon Italian opera by the rival sopranos' public spat, was causing severe financial difficulty for the Royal Academy of Music. Additionally, on 28 January 1728, just as
Siroe was nearing completion,
John Gay's ''
The Beggar's Opera'', which specifically spoofed opera seria of the sort presented by the Royal Academy of Music, opened in London with sensational success and achieved the longest run of any stage piece up to that time. One of Handel's most loyal supporters,
Mary Delany, lamented in a letter to a friend:Yesterday I was at the rehearsal of the new opera composed by Handel: I like it extremely, but the taste of the town is so depraved, that nothing will be approved of but the burlesque. ''The Beggar's Opera'' entirely triumphs over the Italian one. I have not yet seen it, but everybody that has seen it, says it is very comical and full of humour. A month later she was in even greater despair about opera in London:The Opera will not survive after this winter... I am certain excepting some few, the English have no real taste for musick; for if they had, they could not neglect an entertainment so perfect in its kind for a parcel of ballad singers. I am so peevish about it, that I have no patience. 18th century musicologist
Charles Burney wrote of the
gigue that concludes the overture to
Siroe:and the jig was always a favourite as long as movements in that measure were in fashion. Handel himself seems to have been not insensible to its merit, for I heard him play it by memory as a lesson at Mrs. Cibber's, with wonderful neatness and spirit near twenty years after it was composed. The opera is scored for strings, two oboes and
continuo (cello, lute and harpsichord). ==Recordings==