The Hamburg opera catered to various factions which did not invariably see eye to eye. One of these factions consisted of persons who sought in operatic entertainment out and out amusement; the other, of individuals with a religious bent, who regarded the average fantastic and extravagant opera as an invention of hell—_opera diabolica_. When Handel arrived the lyric theatre was making history guided by the composer, Reinhard Keiser. Under Keiser’s management Hamburg became a home of opera in the German tradition. Some of these “German” operas were coarse and in atrocious taste. Hugo Leichtentritt tells, for instance, of a work called “Störtebeker und Gödge Michaelis” (music by Keiser), a story about piracy on the high seas, with executions and massacres, in which bladders filled with sow blood and concealed beneath the costumes of the actors would be perforated in such a manner that the appalled spectators were spattered with a gory shower, often resulting in a stampede. Keiser, though a person of unstable character and extreme presumptuousness, had indisputable genius. He was not yet 30 when Handel came to Hamburg and under him that city experienced its golden age of opera. To be sure, the weakest feature of the Hamburg Opera was the singing. For a long time the institution had no _professional_ singers. The roles were taken by students, shoemakers, tailors, fruiterers “and girls of little talent and less virtue,” while ordinarily artisans “found it more convenient to take female parts.” A gifted Kapellmeister named Cousser, who had been a pupil of Lully in Paris, introduced important reforms and when Handel in 1703 arrived the moment was, in truth, a psychological one. “He was rich in power and strong in will,” wrote the 22-year-old Johann Mattheson, the first acquaintance he was to make in Hamburg. Rolland pictures Handel as having “an ample forehead, a vigorous mouth, a full chin and a head covered with a biretta” (rather after the manner of Wagner, of whom throughout his life Handel reminds one in some amazing traits of character and genius). Under Keiser the adventurous newcomer soon found employment as a second violin in the opera orchestra. His particular intimate was Mattheson, a musician of many gifts and uncommon versatility, who united in himself literary talents, a critical flair and a highly volatile temperament. It was he who helped Handel find pupils and who guided him into the town’s important musical circles. So that before long Handel had access to the organ lofts of Hamburg’s churches and opportunities to compose works for ecclesiastical purposes. Mattheson, incidentally, was a linguist and spoke perfect English; and it was through him that Handel was to enter for the first time into negotiations with what was to become his second country.