had drawn the public to listen to Handel's operas, but it is clear from
many contemporary allusions that Handel's music was too severe to be an
attraction in itself, except to cultivated musicians like Mrs. Pendarves.
The same accusations were made against Handel that were made in later years
against Mozart and Wagner--that his operas were noisy and overloaded with
learned accompaniments. The Italian opera was killed, not so much by the
fact that _The Beggar's Opera_ made its conventions ridiculous (for its
conventions could at that time have been ridiculous only to quite unmusical
people), as by the incontestable attraction of the new work itself. It was
witty and outspoken, with abundance of topical satire; its music consisted
of the tunes that everybody knew, and it presented the public with the
irresistible fascinations of Lavinia Fenton, who was soon to become the
Duchess of Bolton.

Handel may well have resented the success of _The Beggar's Opera_, but
the collapse of the Academy was in reality no great disaster for his own
interests. In the first place, he had done very well out of it from a
financial point of view; the noble directors might have lost their
money, but he had been only their paid servant, in which capacity he had
accumulated enough to invest no less than L10,000 of his own in the next
operatic venture. He obviously realised the strength of the position which
he had built up for himself both as a composer and as a man of business.
The most important result of the Academy's career had been to provide
Handel with the opportunity of consolidating his own style as a composer
of musical drama. Like all the court composers of his age he had provided
whatever his patrons required--chamber music, water music, minuets for
court balls, Church music for royal ceremonial; but the music on which his
own heart was set was that of the theatre.