Once when an opera singer irked George Frederick Handel by refusing to sing one of his arias exactly so, the composer threatened to throw her considerable frame out of the window.
In the strong German accent which he never lost despite his many years in London, Handel let the prima donna know exactly what she was up against. He is said to have roared: "Madam, I know you are a veritable devil but I vill have you know that I am Beelzebub, chief of devils."
Guess which ego got its way?
Given the vile temper of the composer, Frank McNamara could expect far worse treatment from him for tampering with Handel's most celebrated work, and Handel's talent for acerbic one-liners suggests that he would have viewed "bucket of vomit" (the most-quoted phrase from the now almost mythical review in this newspaper) as being far too generous an assessment of McNamara's Messiah XXI.
"Dis tink stinks so bad, beside it human excrement has a perfume sweeter than de rose," he might have said.
The reception which greeted Handel's original version, when it was performed in London for the first time there in 1743, was not a million miles away from the vitriol heaped on McNamara this week. At the time critics described Messiah as offensive, even profane.
The criticism of Handel's Messiah by his librettist Charles Jennens was uncannily similar. While McNamara's interpretation was condemned for being grossly under-rehearsed when it was performed to standing ovations in the RDS last weekend, Jennens also moaned that Handel's 24-day composition was "set in great haste".
Critics this week questioned the vocal abilities of Roger Daltrey, Gladys Knight and others involved in the performance. Jennens wrote of Handel's Messiah: "He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever a one."
The audience even came in for a battering from Jennens. "And so they sing and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune."
He was, to put it mildly, incensed by the original production. "I shall put no more sacred works in his hands to be thus abus'd," he wrote.
Like McNamara, Handel had at points in his career strived to improve or adapt the work of others. Once asked why he borrowed material composed by Bononcini, he said: "It's much too good for him; he did not know what to do with it." Perhaps McNamara felt the same way.
Described variously as corpulent, heavy, sour, genius and Christian, Handel spent his life struggling to achieve perfection in every aspect of his musical life. He began playing the organ in his birthplace, Halle, encouraged by his mother but not by his wealthy barber father who thought it a dishonourable profession.
His training started at seven years of age when he visited a Saxon court and a duke, his father's employer, suggested he should take lessons.
After a brief stint at university, 18-year-old Handel was employed as a violinist in Ham burg's German Opera. One year later, he composed the Almira and almost lost his life in a duel with a friend over a harpsichord. He is said to have been saved by a button on his coat.
The Italian years followed. Handel spent four years in the country composing over 100 cantatas and generally hobnobbing with high society and the composers of the day. He subsequently settled in London, enjoying the patronage of Queen Anne and other royal folk.
The fact that his opera portfolio, including some respected works such as Alcina and Rinaldo, failed to make an impact during the time of London's opera wars went some way to cementing his contemporary reputation as a one-oratorio pony.
However, besides pieces written in that style, the most famous of which was Messiah, he wrote psalms, motets, anthems, passions and instrumental chamber works.
A stroke suffered when he was just 31 held him back but by 40 he was court composer, residing in what is now 25 Brook Street in London, and had become a British subject, England's adopted Orpheus.
It was August 1741 when Handel was invited to Dublin for the winter season by William Cavendish, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
He took rooms in Abbey Street and in the closest thing to the MTV awards hype witnessed in 18th-century Dublin, the composer was treated like a rock god with a stream of young ladies waiting decorously on the street outside to catch his eye.
A SERVANT who walked in on the composer after he had just completed the Hallelujah chorus reported Handel declaring: "I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself seated on His throne with His company of angels." Whether he was in his body or out of his body when he wrote it, he couldn't say, but "God knows."
The same ladies who engaged in a primitive form of stalking were asked not to wear hoops and the gentlemen not to come with swords on the evening of April 13th when Messiah was performed for the first time in Mr Neale's Great Musick Hall in Dublin's Fishamble Street.
Fond of port and said to have some repulsive eating habits, Handel's demise 18 years later echoed that of Bach who shared the same birth year.
Both went blind after developing cataracts and were operated on by the same surgeon who used unsterile instruments which eventually caused a fatal eye infection. He was buried in Westminster Abbey where a monument he paid for himself, with funds left in his will for the purpose, still stands.
The accolades which have followed include one from Beethoven. "Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel at his grave".