Why did Italian opera decline in England during George Frideric Handelâs career?
During the career of George Frideric Handel, the decline of Italian opera in England was driven by several shifting social and cultural factors.12
Public taste began to turn away from the genre due to a growing impatience with performances in an unintelligible foreign language, as well as moral disapproval regarding the lifestyles of the international artists employed by opera companies. This sentiment was significantly accelerated by the 1728 premiere of The Beggarâs Opera, a ballad opera by John Gay that satirized the conventions of highbrow Italian opera and featured popular English tunes. Its immense success fostered a trend of imitations that accustomed London audiences to staged works sung in their own vernacular.213
Furthermore, the market was limited; London struggled to support even one Italian opera house alongside its existing English theatres, leading to intense competition between rival companies that eventually contributed to the bankruptcy of Handelâs own venture in 1737. As interest in Italian opera waned, Handel successfully pivoted to the oratorio, a genre that appealed to the sensibilities of the rising middle class by setting moral, biblical stories to English-language music.21