but his talent for composition soon lifted him into a higher field of
effort. His first opera was produced at Brunswick, but its reception
showed that he must yet master more of the heights and depths of musical
science before attaining any deserved success. So he proceeded to Italy,
and studied under Porpora and Alessandro Scarlatti. In a few years he
became a celebrity, and the opera-houses of Italy eagerly vied with each
other in procuring new works from his fecund talent. Faustina, then
at the zenith of her powers and charms, and Hasse, the most admired
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."