The climax of _bel canto_ was reached when the celebrated vocal artist, Pistocchi, founded at Bologna his training school for vocalists. Many of his earlier pupils were the celebrities and stars of the London Italian opera, during the brilliant epoch in which Handel wrote for that stage. Among them were the male soprano Senesino, and Sgra. Cuzzoni and Faustina Hasse, wife of the opera composer. But the medal had also its reverse. Haughtiness and boundless conceit were prominent characteristics of these artists. Everybody knows how Handel, not always sweet of temper, treated Cuzzoni, who whimsically refused to take a part in a new opera unless the composer would rewrite it for her. As if endowed with superhuman strength, he seized her, held her out of a window, and threatened to drop her if she did not consent to sing the part as written. But those who had not at their command such violent means to subdue singers, had repeatedly to suffer from their tyrannies. Indeed, as vocal art came to be more and more the central point of interest in the opera, consideration for the composer grew less and less; and, finally, he became simply the slave of the almost musically-ignorant vocalists. He was obliged to modify his compositions to their satisfaction, whether the changes were in accord with good taste or not. In the operas of the eighteenth century the musical work was esteemed valuable only in proportion as it offered opportunities for vocal display. The composer, in many cases, gave no more than a skeleton of the aria, and the singers were left free to add any embellishments that would display their vocal abilities to the best advantage. Nevertheless names like those of Cuzzoni, Faustina, Durastanti, Frasi, Strada, La Francesina, Nicolini, Senesino, Bernacchi and Carestini lent brilliancy to the epoch. They were all favorite singers in Handel's day. They were great singers when he engaged them, and he no doubt made them greater. In like manner, Porpora, notwithstanding the weakness of his operas, created the school which produced Caffarelli and Farinelli. The Italians may, with just pride, dwell on the fact that the great majority of the prominent singers of the nineteenth century were pupils of Italian masters, such singers, for instance, as Mesdames Mara, Catalani, Pasta, Malibran, Sontag, Grisi and Persiani; the great tenors Manuel Garcia, Rubini and Mario, and the incomparable bassi Lablache and Tamburini, all of whom owed their faultless method to the purely vocal style of the music in which it was their ambition to excel. But, in spite of its grace and its richly melodious flow, there were serious faults in the older opera of Italy. There was, in the first place, insincerity in dramatic expression.