The following season brought Handel better fortune, and a decline in the
popularity of Buononcini. In November and December, _Muzio Sceaola_ and
_Floridante_ were revived; on January 12, Handel produced a new opera,
_Ottone_, with a new singer, Francesca Cuzzoni, who eclipsed all the other
women singers completely, until after some years she herself was driven
into eclipse by her historic rival Faustina Bordoni.

_Ottone_ contains one number at least which is familiar to everyone who
knows the name of Handel--the gavotte at the end of the overture. This
spirited piece of music won popularity at the outset, and even to-day it
is probably the best known melody of Handel, after the "Harmonious
Blacksmith." But the real success of _Ottone_ was made by Cuzzoni.

How Cuzzoni came to be engaged at the opera is not clear. Handel cannot
possibly have ever heard her sing; it has been suggested that she was
engaged by Heidegger. She was about twenty-two, and had made her first
appearance at Venice in 1719, after which she sang in various Italian
theatres. She had a voice of extraordinary range, beauty, and agility; she
was equally accomplished both in florid music and in airs of a sustained
and pathetic character, and she was never known to sing out of tune. In
appearance she was anything but attractive: she was short, squat, and
excessively plain-featured. She was uneducated and ill-mannered, impulsive
and quarrelsome. Her arrival in London was delayed for some reason, so
the management sent Sandoni, the second harpsichord-player, to meet
her, probably at Dover. On the way to London they were married; Sandoni
doubtless had an eye to the money which she was to earn.

Her first air in _Ottone_, "Falsa imagine," fixed her reputation as an
expressive and pathetic singer (Burney); she had at first refused to sing
it, on which Handel remarked to her, "Madame, je sais que vous etes une