For the fourth season in 1723, for which his first opera was "Ottone", Handel assembled a cast of star singers including the internationally famous castrato, Senesino, beginning a long and sometimes stormy association with Handel that included creating seventeen leading roles in his operas for London, at a vast salary. The star soprano Margherita Durastanti, who had sung in many of Handel's early works in Italy as well as his previous operas in London, joined the cast, as did English soprano Anastasia Robinson, who was unhappy about much of the music Handel had written for her to sing in "Ottone", feeling that she could not portray, as he desired, scorn and anger, and appealed in a letter to one of the patrons of the Royal Academy to intervene with Handel to write gentler music for her to suit her abilities. Also in the cast was another internationally renowned castrato, Gaetano Berenstadt, in the first of three roles he created in Handel operas.