[194] It is the eternal struggle between the art of knowledge and the pseudo-popular art. It recurred again a little later with Rousseau. The principal difference between the two phases of the strife is that in the epoch with which we are occupied the champion of the anti-learned art was a well-instructed musician who did not uphold his cause by ignorance, but by laziness and by profligacy. [195] "To study this more closely," says Hugo Goldschmidt (_Vocal Ornamentation_, 1908), "Bononcini's songs are really _lieder_, to which is applied, for good or evil, the old form of the Aria Da Capo, or the Cavatina: the taste for little airs in the form of a song spread itself widely during the end of the seventeenth century in Germany and in England." Bononcini, who was always led naturally by fashion, and by his indolent facility, abandoned himself to it still more in England, and suited it to the English taste. [196] The work had already been given in Italy about 1714. It was then that Lord Burlington heard it, and became the champion of Bononcini when he decided to come to England. [197] Handel wrote the third act, Bononcini the second, the first had been already set by a certain Signor Pippo (Phillipo Matti?). [198] The victory of Handel began for the most part with the engagement of his new interpreter, Francesca Cuzzoni, of Parma, a great and vigorous artist, violent and passionate, whose excellent soprano voice excelled particularly in pathetic _cantabile_ music. She was twenty-two years old, and came to London, where she made her début in _Ottone_. Her quarrels with Handel, and how he treated her by threatening to throw her out of the window, are well known. Handel gave again in May another opera, _Flavio_, of little importance. On his side Bononcini produced _Erminia and Attilio_, _Aristosi_, _Coreolanus_, in which the prison scene reduced the ladies to tears, and inspired numerous analogous scenes in the following operas of Handel. [199] Bononcini gave his last piece, _Kalfernia_, on April 18, 1724. Ariosti says possibly in 1725. On the other hand, in 1725 there commenced to be played in London the works of Leonardo Vinci, and Porpora, patronized by Handel himself. [200] Faustina Bordoni was born in 1700 at Venice. She had been educated in the school of Marcello. In 1730 she married Hasse. Her singing had an incredible agility. No one could repeat the same note with such rapidity, and she seemed able to hold on sounds to any extent. Less concentrated and less profound than Cuzzoni, she had an art more moving and brilliant. [201] Two months before Handel had given the opera _Scipione_ (March 12, 1726).