Cuzzoni, and married the Earl of Peterborough. She left a
reputation for integrity and goodness seldom enjoyed by even the highest
celebrities. Cuzzoni made an immediate and immense success, and Haendel
took great pains to compose airs adapted to display her exquisite voice.
She, in return, treated him with insolence and caprice, so that he
looked about for another singer. His choice fell upon Faustina Bordoni,
a Venetian lady who had risen to fame in Italy. She was elegant in
figure, agreeable in manners, and had a handsome face. Cuzzoni, on the
other hand, was ill made and homely, and her temper was turbulent and
obstinate. A bitter rivalry at once sprang up, Haendel fanning the flame
by composing for Bordoni as diligently as he had previously done for
Cuzzoni.

The public was soon divided, and the rivalry was carried to an absurd
point. At length the singers actually came to blows, and so fierce was
the conflict that the bystanders were unable to separate them until each
combatant bore substantial marks of the other's esteem. Cuzzoni was then
dispensed with, and went to Vienna. She was reckless and extravagant,
and was at several times imprisoned for debt, finally dying in frightful
indigence after subsisting by button making,--a sad termination of a
brilliant career. Bordoni led a prosperous life, married Adolfo Hasse,
the director of the orchestra in Dresden, sang before Frederick the
Great, and passed a comfortable old age. Both she and her husband died
in 1783, she at the age of eighty-three and he at eighty-four.

Other singers of this period were Lavinia Fenton, who became the Duchess
of Bolton, and who is chiefly remarkable for having been the original
Polly in Gay's "Beggar's Opera;" Marthe le Rochois, who sang many of
Lulli's operas,--a woman of ordinary appearance but wonderful magnetism;
Madame La Maupin, one of the wildest, most adventurous and reckless
women ever on the stage; and Caterina Mingotti, a faultless singer, of
respectable habits. Mingotti was seized with the fatal ambition to
manage opera, and soon reached the verge of bankruptcy. She contrived,
however, to earn enough by singing during the succeeding five years to
support her respectably in her old age.

To this period also belongs Farinelli, or Broschi, who was the greatest
tenor of his age, perhaps the greatest who ever lived, for we are told
that there was no branch of his art which he did not carry to the
highest pitch of perfection. H