e for the Queen's Birthday and the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate in celebration of the Peace of Utrecht, and he was granted an annual allowance of 200 by Queen Anne. Recognized by prominent members of both the English aristocracy and the intelligentsia, Handel was in no hurry to return to Hanover. Soon he had no need to do so, for on the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the elector George Louis became King George I of England. In 1718 Handel became director of music to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the 12 Chandos Anthems and the English masque Acis and Galatea, among other works. Another masque, Haman and Mordecai, was to be the effective starting point for the English oratorio. Except for a few visits to the European continent, Handel spent the rest of his life in England. In 1726 he became a British subject, which enabled him to be appointed a composer of the Chapel Royal. In this capacity he wrote much music, including the Coronation Anthems for George II in 1727 and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline 10 years later. From 1720 until 1728 the operas at the King's Theatre in London were staged by the Royal Academy of Music, and Handel composed the music for most of them. Among those of the 1720s were Floridante (1721), Ottone (1723), Giulio Cesare (1724), Rodelinda (1725), and Scipione (1726). From 1728, after the sensation caused by John Gay's Beggar's Opera (which satirized serious opera), the future of opera in the Italian style became increasingly uncertain in England. It went into decline for a variety of reasons, one of them being the impatience of the English with a form of entertainment in an unintelligible language sung by artists of whose morals they disapproved. But despite the vagaries of public taste, Handel went on composing operas until 1741, by which time he had written more than 40 such works. As the popularity of opera declined in England, oratorio became increasingly popular. The revivals in 1732 of Handel'...
