dmired
composer of the day, were congenial mates, and their marriage was not
long delayed.

Of this composer a few passing words of summary may be interesting. His
career was one long success, and he wrote more than a hundred operas,
besides a host of other compositions. Few composers have had during
their lifetime such world-wide celebrity, and of these few none are
so completely forgotten now. The facile powers of Hasse seem to have
reflected the most genial though not the deepest influences of his time.
He had nothing in common with the grand German school then rising into
notice, or with the simple majesty of the early Italian writers. Himself
originally a singer, and living in an age of brilliant singers, he was
one of the first representatives of that school of Italian opera which
was called into being by the worship of vocal art for its own sake. He
had an inexhaustible flow of tunefulness, and the few charming songs
of his now extant show great elegance of melodic structure, and such
sympathy with the needs of the voice as make them the most perfect
vehicle for expression and display on the part of the singer. For ten
years, that most wonderful of male singers, as musical historians unite
in calling Farinelli, charmed away the melancholy of Philip V. of Spain
by singing to him every evening the same two melodies of Hasse, taken
from the opera of "Artaserse."

In 1731 the celebrated couple accepted an offer from the brilliant Court
of Dresden, presided over by Augustus II., as great a lover of art and
literature as Goethe's Duke of Saxe-Weimar, or as the present Louis of
Bavaria. This aesthetic monarch squandered great sums on pictures and
music, and gave Hasse unlimited power and resources to place the Dresden
opera on such a footing as to make it foremost in Europe. His first
opera produced in Dresden was the masterpiece of his life, "Alessandro
dell' Indie," and its great success was perhaps owing in part to the
splendid singing and acting of Faustina, for whom indeed the music had
been carefully designed. As the husband of the most fascinating prima
donna of her age, Hasse had no easy time. His life was still further
embittered by the presence and intrigues of Porpora, his old master and
now rival, and jealousy of Porpora's pupil, Mingotti, who threatened to
dispute the sway of his wife. Hasse's musical spite was amusingly shown
in writing an air for Mingotti in his "Demofoonte." He composed the
music for w