When I was in college, I had a music theory professor tell a very amusing anecdote about Handel. While I like the story, I've never been able to find any other evidence that the story was true. While I respect the professor and his PhD, I was wondering if any historian could either confirm or even deny ("there is no way that ever happened because...") the tale.
The story goes that Handel was rehearsing (professor said Messiah) in a second story room with a soprano and two other vocalists. Handel was seated at the harpsichord guiding the rehearsal, when the soprano became increasingly annoying. She would frequently interrupt the rehearsal, claiming her part was not big enough, that she was being ignored, and demanding Handel write more music for her in this particular section. Handel suffered it for a while until eventually, in the middle of one of the soprano's complaints, Handel stood up, picked the woman up (professor described Handel as a very large, barrel chested man), seated her on the window sill, took her arms and leaned her out the window. Handel them calmly explained that when the women stopped screaming, he would pull her back in. After the screaming subsided, Handel pulled her back into the room and the woman ceased to complain.
So, did it happen? Might it have happened? Is their no way of knowing if it happened? Or did it not happen?
It's a "real legend" if that's what you're asking! Hard to say if it really happened however. Handel was not an easy man to work with though, he got in tiffs with other singers, you can rattle off about every big singer of the era as someone who once pissed him off, even my username Caffarelli, Caffarelli was perhaps even finally the singer that pissed Handel off enough to make him quit doing opera, because he did stop pretty close after working with him (probably not the reason though). But it certainly fits with Handel's character for him to get super mad at a singer.
The legendary almost-defenestrated soprano was Francesca Cuzzoni, but it's not for Messiah, teacher was wrong there, the legend is attached to the rehersals of Ottone. It's mentioned in Cuzzoni's wikipedia page as its so well known.
And here's a bad dramatic reenactment by a famous modern opera singer!
We are told about that story by John Mainwaring, Handel's first biographer, in his Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel, from 1760 (published one year after Handel's death). You can find that story on page 110, in the footnote.
The singer involved was [Francesca Cuzzoni] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuzzoni), an Italian singer who became super famous. She sadly went from being a super star (presumably a gorgeous woman having the world at her feet), to be seriously in debt, and then to live in utter poverty in her last years. Quite a sad story...
Handel wrote Cleopatra for her, in his Giulio Cesare in Egitto. That role alone suggests she was a great singer. He worked with her for several years, giving her other roles. He was THE OPERA GOD, so she had to be a superb singer.
Some of my favourite arias come from Giulio Cesare, and were written for Cuzzoni:
If you are not familiar with that opera, do yourself a favour and watch it. Great stuff! Really, you could even start just by listening to its most famous arias. They are SO GOOD I even use them to have my piano students work on figured bass, sight reading, and/or accompaniment. And I am not even into opera...