the royal academy of music collapsed at the end of the 1728 - 29 season, partly due to the huge fees paid to the star singers. a bitter rivalry had developed between the supporters of the two prima donnas who had appeared in handel's last few operas, francesca cuzzoni and faustina bordoni, culminating in june 1727 with a brawl in the audience while the two prima donnas onstage stopped singing, traded insults and pulled each other's hair, to enormous public scandal satirized in the popular "the beggar's opera" of 1728 and bringing italian opera of the kind handel composed into a certain amount of ridicule and disrepute. at the end of the 1729 season, both ladies left london for engagements in continental europe. handel went into partnership with john james heidegger, the theatrical impresario who held the lease on the king's theatre in the haymarket where the operas were presented and started a new opera company with a new prima donna, anna strada.