Encouraged by his Florentine luck Handel was moved to try his fortunes in Venice, where opera houses had sprung up everywhere and at one time numbered fifteen. Seven were playing on one and the same evening during Carnival time and there were musical diversions or solemnities of one sort or another in churches and in those women’s conservatories called “hospitals”. Venice was then the musical capital of Italy, somewhat as Milan was to become at a later date. Handel does not appear to have contributed to the operatic life of the city at this time but his chance was to come before long. Yet he did make one encounter in Venice which was to have consequences—he met Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover, and the Duke of Manchester, English Ambassador Extraordinary. He went back to Rome (where an unsuccessful attempt was made to convert him to Catholicism); yet he loved the city and regretfully tore himself away from it to make a jaunt to Naples, which contributed importantly to his artistic sensibilities. As he had done elsewhere in Italy he haunted the picture galleries and nourished his enthusiasm for paintings. He assimilated the Spanish and French musical styles which “fought for honors in this city”; saw much of Alessandro Scarlatti, interested himself in the folk music of the place, noted down the melodies of the Calabrian Pifferari, met the Venetian Cardinal Grimani, composed for the Neapolitan “Arcadians” the _serenata_ “Acis and Galatea”. Grimani, whose family owned the theatre of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, supplied him with the libretto of an opera, “Agrippina”, which Handel probably began to compose on the spot. Its performance in Venice was as good as assured and from Naples he returned to Rome, making another useful friend in the Bishop Agostino Steffani, who was charged with secret missions by different German princes and held at the same time the post of Kapellmeister at the Court of Hanover. “Agrippina” was produced in Venice, 1709-10. Its reception exceeded anything the composer had known till then. The chronicles tell of cries of “Viva il caro Sassone”, also of “extravagances impossible to record.” Obviously his travels in the peninsula had superbly enriched his creative powers and the Venetians found the new work “the most melodious of Handel’s Italian operas.” Nor was its popularity confined to Venice. He seems to have had some idea of going to Paris, became familiar with the French language, used it in his correspondence and Romain Rolland describes his style as “always very correct and having the fine courtesy of the Court of Louis XIV.”