page_title: Organ concertos, Op. 4 (Handel)
section_title: Rivalry between companies
hierarchical_section_title: Organ concertos, Op. 4 (Handel) / Origins / Rivalry between companies
caption_attribution_description: English: Etching by William Hogarth of a rehearsal of The world shall bow to the Assyrian throne from the lost oratorio Judith of Willem de Fesch to words by William Huggins
context_page_description: The Handel organ concertos, Op. 4, HWV 289–294, are six organ concertos for chamber organ and orchestra composed by George Frideric Handel in London between 1735 and 1736 and published in 1738 by the printing company of John Walsh. Written as interludes in performances of oratorios in Covent Garden, they were the first works of their kind for this combination of instruments and served as a model for later composers.
context_section_description: In the 1730s London theatre audiences were constantly clamouring for novelty and displays of virtuosity on the musical stage. Handel's Italian opera company had to compete with the full range of spoken drama as well as popular musical entertainment, including English ballad operas such as the highly successful  Beggar's Opera and the pantomimes and burlesques produced by John Rich. Between 1732 and 1733 the composer Thomas Arne with his son and John Frederick Lampe briefly ran an English opera company devoted to full-length operas in the English language. Of these entertainments, Italian opera demanded the highest expenditure and posed the highest risks.
  Between 1733 and 1737 these financial difficulties were brought to a head by the establishment of a new rival Italian opera company, the Opera of the Nobility, set up ruthlessly to court Handel's potential audience. Formed by members of the disbanded Royal Academy of Music, to which Handel had previously belonged, it succeeded in poaching almost all of his principal singers, including the celebrated castrato Senesino and the bass singer Antonio Montagnana. Whereas Handel's company was supported by the king George II and his wife, the Opera of the Nobility had the patronage of their son Frederick, Prince of Wales, an open sign of deep-seated disagreements within the royal family.
  It was during the second season of rivalry in 1734–1735, when competition between the two  companies had become fiercest, that Handel first introduced his organ concertos. By that stage the Opera of the Nobility had assembled a star-studded cast which now additionally included the castrato Farinelli and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni. Performances of Hasse's Venetian opera Artaserse played to packed houses and Farinelli became the toast of the town. Later in the season they even revived one of Handel's own operas Ottone, albeit in a heavily bowdlerised form, again with Farinelli as a guaranteed audience drawer. Artaserse and other operas including Porpora's new opera Polifemo, a precursor of Handel's pastoral masque Acis and Galatea, vied for the audience of Handel's three new works – the operas Ariodante and Alcina, part of the trilogy based on Ariosto's romantic epic Orlando Furioso,  and the oratorio Athalia.
caption: William Hogarth, 1732: Choral rehearsal for the oratorio Judith by Willem de Fesch
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