He must have toiled like a
slave, in a wet, cold garret, and often without sufficient to eat. Yet,
as in everything he undertook, dogged did it. He never became a
splendid executant, like Bach and Handel before him, and Mozart and
Beethoven immediately after, but he must have been head and shoulders
above the ordinary musical practitioner.
His first opportunity came when he made the acquaintance of one Felix
Kurz, a well-known comic actor, for whom he wrote the comic opera, _Der
Neue Krumme Teufel_. This, judging from the places it was played at,
seems to have had quite a vogue. The music is lost; I have never seen
the words. But through this operetta or pantomime with songs he appears
to have been introduced to Metastasio, who was, of course, a mighty
great man at that epoch--a kind of Scribe. Anyhow, Metastasio was
superintending the education of the two daughters of a Spanish family,
the de Martines, and Haydn was engaged to teach the elder music.
Metastasio brought him to the notice of Porpora--then quite as important
a person as Metastasio himself--and Porpora made Haydn an offer. Haydn
was to clean the boots and do other household jobs, and he was to
accompany when Porpora gave lessons. In return, he was to have lessons
from Porpora and to be fed and clothed.
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