CHAPTER V

Handel naturalized--partnership with Heidegger--_Esther_--the Opera of
the Nobility--visit to Oxford--opera season at Covent Garden--Charles
Jennens--collapse of both opera-houses.


Handel had by this time definitely decided to make England his home; on
February 13, 1726, he had been naturalised as an English subject. He had
every reason to regard England as the best place in which to live. He
enjoyed the protection of the German court; George II and Queen Caroline
gave him indeed a good deal more encouragement than George I. The
appointments of composer to the Chapel Royal and composer to the court were
purely honorary, but they strengthened his position. As to the opera-house,
he must by now have felt that he was its unquestioned autocrat, and he
could not help being aware that he was without a rival in Europe as far as
the stage was concerned, for old Scarlatti had gone to his grave, and the
younger generation had produced no composer of such outstanding eminence.
And in England music was generously rewarded from a material point of view;
high fees were paid, not only to singers, but to teachers as well, and
England was also one of the few countries where music-printing was a
flourishing business. A good proportion of Handel's savings must have come
from the sale of his published compositions; among Handel's contemporaries
no other composer in Europe had so many of his works printed during his
lifetime. English society seemed always ready to subscribe for a new
musical work, and neither in Paris nor in Amsterdam was music so admirably
engraved as in London.