Senesino

His debut was at Venice in 1707, and during the next decade he acquired a European reputation and, by the time he sang in Lotti's Giove in Argo in 1717 at Dresden, a commensurately enormous salary.

In 1719, the composer Quantz heard him in Lotti's Teofane at Dresden, and stated: "He had a powerful, clear, equal and sweet contralto voice, with a perfect intonation and an excellent shake.

Following a dispute with the court composer Johann David Heinichen in 1720, over an aria in the opera Flavio Crispo, which led to his dismissal, Senesino was engaged by Handel as primo uomo (lead male singer) in his company, the Royal Academy of Music.

He became friendly with, among others, the Duke of Chandos, Lord Burlington and the landscape designer William Kent, while amassing a fine collection of paintings, rare books, scientific instruments, and other treasures, including a service of silver made by the famous Paul de Lamerie.

Though creating seventeen leading roles for Handel (including Giulio Cesare, Orlando, and Bertarido in Rodelinda), his relationship with the composer was frequently stormy: "The one was perfectly refractory; the other was equally outrageous," according to the contemporary historian Mainwaring.

Thus he came to sing alongside the great soprano castrato Farinelli, and their meeting on stage (in the pasticcio Artaserse) led to a famous anecdote of Senesino breaking character, as reported by the music historian Charles Burney.

[1] The event of this public exchange between Senesino, Robinson, and the Earl became topical fodder for the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift who circulated the story.

Swift's writing in turn inspired the creation of a number of obscene, misogynistic, and at times sexually subversive epistles written about Robinson, Senesino, the Earl of Peterborough, and the castrato Farinelli between 1724 and 1736.