The vocal ensemble pieces hold a much humbler place in Italian Opera, and Handel has made fewer innovations on this ground than in the vocal solo. However, one finds some very interesting experiments here. His duets are often written in an imitative style, serious and rather sad, in the old Italian school of Provenzale and Steffani,[321] or in the Lully style, where the two voices mingle together note by note with exactitude.[322] But _Atalanta_ and _Poro_ furnish us also with duets of an alluring freedom and uncommon artistry. And in the duet in the third act of _Orlando_, Handel attempts to differentiate the characters of the weeping Angelica and the furious Roland.--Similarly with the trios written in the strict style of imitation, like that in _Alcina_, Act III, the trio in _Acis and Galatea_ carefully defines the couple of lovers from the colossal figure of Polyphemus, the trio in _Tamerlano_ contrasts the exasperated Tamerlano with Bajazet and with Asteria, who aggravated him, and the trio in the judgment of Solomon distinguishes the three diverse characters: the calm power of Solomon, the aggressive cries of the wicked mother, and the sorrowful supplications of the good mother. The trio from _Susanna_ is no less free, but in the humorous style: one of the two old men madrigalises whilst the other menaces. The _ensemble_ forms altogether a most vivid little scene which Mozart himself would not have disowned.[323] Quartets are rare. There are two little ones in the _Triumph of Time_, written in Rome. In _Radamisto_ Handel made the attempt at a dramatic quartet, but rather clumsily, and with repeated _Da Capo_.[324] The most moving quartet is found in the second act of _Jephtha_. It is in _Jephtha_ also, Act III, where the only quintet which he wrote is to be found. The choruses in the Italian opera of the eighteenth century[325] were reduced to a rudimentary stage, and they consist merely of the union of the voices of soloists at the end of a piece, with certain banal and brilliant acclamations during the course of the action. Notwithstanding this, Handel wrote some stronger ones in _Alcina_; those of _Giulio Cesare_, _Ariodante_, and _Atalanta_, were also exceptional in the operas of his time. So with the final choruses Handel arranged after a fashion to escape from the current banality: that of _Tamerlano_ is written in a melancholy dramatic vein; that of _Orlando_ strives to preserve the individual character of their personality; that of _Giulio Cesare_ is tacked on to a duet. There are also choruses of people; the Matelots in _Giustino_; that of the hunters in _Deidamia_, where the choruses take up the refrain from the air announced by the solo voice. It is the same in _Alessandro_, where the soldiers' chorus repeats Alessandro's hymn, slightly curtailed.