Atalanta (opera) spectacular display of fireworks, which was highly popular with the royal family and the London audience, and the opera and fireworks display were revived a number of times in the year of its first performance. An arioso from the opera, "Care selve", is often heard in recital and on recordings. The German-born Handel had brought Italian opera to London stages for the first time in 1711 with his opera "Rinaldo". An enormous success, "Rinaldo" created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. Handel had presented new operas
Early music of the British Isles accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors. In England her cousin Elizabeth I was also trained in music. She played the lute, virginals, sang, danced, and even claimed to have composed dance music. She was major patron for English musicians composers (particularly in the Chapel Royal) while in her royal household she employed numerous foreign musicians in her consorts of viols, flutes, recorders, and sackbuts and shawms. Byrd emerged as the leading composer of the Elizabethan court, writing sacred and secular polyphony, viol, keyboard and consort music, reflecting the growth in