Anastasia Robinson, mild and pleasing in manners, with great sweetness of expression and large blue eyes, was engaged to sing by George Frederick Haendel, who at that time was the impresario of the London opera. Other singers he engaged in Dresden, of whom Margherita Durastanti was the soprano. Large, coarse, and masculine, she is said to have been distinguished as much for the high respectability of her character as for her musical talent. Senesino was considered the leading tenor singer of his day. He was a man of imposing figure and majestic carriage, with a clear, powerful, equal, and fluent voice. The basso was Boschi, who was chiefly remarkable for a voice of immense volume and a very vigorous style of acting. Anastasia Robinson was eclipsed, after a career of twelve years, by Francesca Cuzzoni, and married the Earl of Peterborough. She left a reputation for integrity and goodness seldom enjoyed by even the highest celebrities. Cuzzoni made an immediate and immense success, and Haendel took great pains to compose airs adapted to display her exquisite voice. She, in return, treated him with insolence and caprice, so that he looked about for another singer. His choice fell upon Faustina Bordoni, a Venetian lady who had risen to fame in Italy. She was elegant in figure, agreeable in manners, and had a handsome face. Cuzzoni, on the other hand, was ill made and homely, and her temper was turbulent and obstinate. A bitter rivalry at once sprang up, Haendel fanning the flame by composing for Bordoni as diligently as he had previously done for Cuzzoni. The public was soon divided, and the rivalry was carried to an absurd point. At length the singers actually came to blows, and so fierce was the conflict that the bystanders were unable to separate them until each combatant bore substantial marks of the other's esteem. Cuzzoni was then dispensed with, and went to Vienna. She was reckless and extravagant, and was at several times imprisoned for debt, finally dying in frightful indigence after subsisting by button making,--a sad termination of a brilliant career. Bordoni led a prosperous life, married Adolfo Hasse, the director of the orchestra in Dresden, sang before Frederick the Great, and passed a comfortable old age. Both she and her husband died in 1783, she at the age of eighty-three and he at eighty-four.