But the singers are taking us away from the Opera. Let us return to Handel, all of whose vocalists together, admirable as they were, could not save the Royal Academy of Music from ruin. After the final failure of that enterprise in 1728, the directors entered into an arrangement with Heidegger for opening the King's Theatre under their joint management. Handel went to Italy to engage new singers, but did not make a very brilliant selection. Heidegger, nevertheless, did his duty as a manager, and introduced the principal members of the new company to public notice in the following "puff direct," which, for cool unadorned impudence, has not been surpassed even in the present day. "Mr. Handel, who is just returned from Italy, has contracted with the following persons to perform in the Italian Operas, Signor Bernacchi, who is esteemed the best singer in Italy; Signora Merighi, a woman of a very fine presence, an excellent actress, and a very good singer, with a counter-tenor voice; Signora Strada, who hath a very fine treble voice, a person of singular merit; Signor Annibale Pio Fabri, a most excellent tenor, and a fine voice; his wife, who performs a man's part well; Signora Bertoldi, who has a very fine treble voice, she is also a very genteel actress, both in men and women's parts; a bass voice, from Hamburgh, there being none worth engaging in Italy." I fancy this was an attempt to carry on Italian Opera at a reduced expenditure, for as soon as the speculation began to fail, the popular Senesino was again engaged. Handel had had a serious quarrel with this singer, but when a manager is in want of a star, and a star is tempted with a lucrative engagement, personal feelings are not taken into account. They ought to have been, however, in this particular case, at least by Handel, for the breach between the composer and the singer was renewed, and Senesino left the King's Theatre to join the company which was being formed at the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, under the direction of Porpora. Handel now set out once more for Italy, but again failed to engage any singers of celebrity, with the exception of Carestini, whom he heard at Bologna at the same time as Farinelli. That he should have preferred the former to the latter seems unaccountable, for by the common consent of musicians, critics, and the public, Farinelli, wherever he sang, was pronounced the greatest singer of his time, and it appears certain that no singer ever affected an audience in so powerful a manner. The passionate (and slightly blasphemous) exclamation of the entranced Englishwoman, "One God and one Farinelli," together with the almost magical effect of Farinelli's voice in tranquilising the half demented Ferdinand VI., seems to show that his singing must have been something like the music of patriarchal times; which charmed serpents, and which in a later age throws highly impressionable women into convulsions. [Sidenote: THE NATIONAL ANTHEM.]