the subscription is expired and nobody will renew it. The directors are
always squabbling, and they have so many divisions among themselves that I
wonder they have not broke up before; Senesino goes away next winter, and I
believe Faustina, so you see harmony is almost out of fashion."_Admeto_ was
revived on June 1, 1728; this was Faustina's last appearance, and the last
night of the Royal Academy of Music. The opera was announced for June 11,
but Faustina declared herself indisposed. The opera was shut up and the
company disbanded. Faustina went with Senesino to Paris, and thence to
Venice, where Cuzzoni also made her appearance, and continued in the local
dialect the campaign of slander against Faustina's alleged immoralities.

There were many reasons for the collapse of the opera. It had been carried
on with reckless extravagance, and the noble directors were in all
probability not very expert men of business. The scandalous behaviour of
all concerned in _Astyanax_ may well have caused a falling-off in the
subscriptions. Mrs. Pendarves, who was a lady of unimpeachable conduct,
continued to go to the opera, but she was a serious lover of music and
a personal friend of Handel. The failure of the Academy is generally
attributed to the success of _The Beggar's Opera_, which had been brought
out at Lincoln's Inn Fields on January 29, 1728, and at once took London
by storm. A letter of Mrs. Pendarves, dated January 19, but evidently
continued later, tells us that she went to a rehearsal of _Siroe_: "I like
it extremely, but the taste of the town is so depraved, that nothing will
be approved of but the burlesque. The _Beggar's Opera_ entirely triumphs
over the Italian one." Even Mrs. Pendarves could not help enjoying it, once
she had seen it.

It is probable that Handel himself had contributed to the downfall of the
Academy. Out of the 487 performances given between 1720 and 1728, Handel's
works obtained 245, Buononcini's 108, and Ariosti's 55. The great singers