The Italian cantatas of Handel are likewise to be regarded as a less important branch, or even a component part of his operas, just as the chamber duets, anthems and similar compositions belong in the domain of his oratorios. For a brief survey of his works, it is therefore sufficient to confine ourselves to the opera and the oratorio. The opinion has been widespread and prevails even in our day, that so long as Handel occupied himself with the opera, he was obstinately pursuing the wrong path, which he only abandoned after many bitter experiences, in order henceforth to devote himself to the oratorio, for which nature had intended him. For it has always been considered one of the most marked characteristics of genius that it discovers the right way unconsciously, as it were, and impelled by inward necessity. According to this, Handel, with his forty operas, would have mistaken his true bent during the best forty years of his life. The opinion rests, however, upon the theory of an antithesis between the opera and the oratorio, which has never existed. During the hundred years preceding Handel's time, the two forms of art, simultaneous in origin, kept equal pace in their development. Through the changes wrought in the opera in the middle of the seventeenth century at Venice, and from the end of that period at Naples, solo song attained almost complete supremacy in that field, while in the oratorio there was still room for the chorus. The extraordinary pleasure derived from solo-singing is shown by the effort made to express the individual personality in music, and the opportunity of doing this is what attracted Handel to the opera. If we regard the poetic compositions employed by him in the light of their dramatic value, their delineation of character, the systematic management and increasing intensity of the action, they are not, for the most part, calculated to excite a profound interest. They are after the manner of all operatic poems in Italy in 1700, and generally derive their material from ancient history or from mythological lore. But the poets certainly show skill in so arranging their incidents that the personages concerned find opportunity to give utterance to their feelings. The portrayal of character, by means of music, was, then, the object in view. This Handel wished to accomplish in his operas, and, within the limits which he prescribed for himself, he was entirely successful. Not psychological processes, but psychological conditions were what he wished to represent in his arias, and the progress of the action lies always outside of the principal musical themes. That this was intentional with him, and also with the Italians of his time, is proved most clearly by the form of solo-song almost exclusively employed. The aria, as fashioned by Alessandro Scarlatti, is only adapted to a feeling which indeed rises above its original state, but soon returns to it. The recurrence of the first part at the end,