Handel was spurred by his fortunate operatic debut to embark on a second work. The fact that “Almira” had been sung partly in Italian, partly in German, did not keep it from obtaining twenty performances at the outset. Handel made the mistake of interrupting its run because he believed that in his next opera, “Nero, or Love Obtained Through Blood and Murder,” he had written something better. Mattheson sang the part of Nero; but the opera died after only three hearings. To aggravate matters the Keiser regime, now largely discredited, gave promise of putting an end to the Hamburg Opera; and Handel began to see himself enmeshed in the catastrophe of the wreck, a victim of elaborate jealousies and intrigues. * * * In 1704 he had made the acquaintance of an Italian prince, Giovanni Gaston del Medici, an adventurer and a notorious profligate, whose father was Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was astonished that Handel seemed so little interested in Italian music, including some specimens he set before him. Handel insisted that “angels would be necessary to sing them if such stuff were to sound even agreeable.” At this time his ambition was to create a German style, independent of foreign influences. And for Keiser’s successor, Saurbrey, Handel turned out a new opera, “Florindo und Daphne”, which, like Wagner’s “Rienzi”, proved to be so long that the composer caused it to be given in two parts, “for fear”, he admitted, “that the music might tire the hearers.” Then, without taking leave of Mattheson or any of his friends, he accepted the prince’s invitation and went to Italy.