page_title: Sosarme
section_title: Context and analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Sosarme / Context and analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: A reproduction as a postcard of the Italian Opera House (King's Theatre), built by John Vanbrugh, at the Haymarket before it was destroyed by a fire on 17 June 1789. The original print was earlier published in Charles John Smith's Historical and Literary Antiquities,[1] Messrs Bernard Quaritch, Ltd.[2] The book and print was republished as: Smith, Charles John (1875) Historical and Literary Curiosities, London: Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, pp.&#160;Plate 97 Retrieved on 10 February 2011. The original print measures 18 cm x 21.3 cm and is under the H. R. Beard Collection F94-14. TM 376. Victoria and Albert Museum, London Deutsch: William Capon (1757-1827): Italian Opera House (King's Theatre). (Architekt: de:John Vanbrugh). Bleistift und Wasserfarben. Originalgröße: 18 cm x 21,3 cm H. R. Beard Collection F94-14. TM 376. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
context_page_description: Sosarme, re di Media is an opera by George Frideric Handel written in 1732 for the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, London, where it ran for 12 performances. The text was based on an earlier libretto by Antonio Salvi, Dionisio, Re di Portogallo, and adapted by an unknown writer. The original setting of Portugal was changed to Sardis in Lydia.
context_section_description: The German-born Handel, after spending some of his early career composing operas and other pieces in Italy, settled in London, where in 1711 he had brought Italian opera for the first time with his opera Rinaldo. A tremendous success, Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. In 1719, Handel was appointed music director of an organisation called the Royal Academy of Music (unconnected with the present day London conservatoire), a company under royal charter to produce Italian operas in London. Handel was not only to compose operas for the company but hire the star singers, supervise the orchestra and musicians, and adapt operas from Italy for London performance.
  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. 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.
  With two thirds of the score of Sosarme completed, the names of the characters and the setting were changed from historical characters in 14th century Portugal to a mythical Lydia, probably out of fear of offending one of Britain's closest allies, Portuguese King John V.
  
  Dramatist Aaron Hill, who had collaborated with Handel on Rinaldo, wrote in 1732:
  We have likewise had two Operas, Etius and Sosarmes, the first most Masterly, the last most pleasing, and in my mind exceeding pretty:  There are two Duetto’s which Ravish me, and indeed the whole is vastly Genteel; (I am sorry I am so wicked) but I like one good Opera better than Twenty Oratorio’s.
  Viscount Perceval noted in his diary:
  “I went to the Opera Sosarmis, made by Hendel, which takes with the town, and that justly, for it is one of the best I ever heard.”
  Winton Dean has commented on dramatic weaknesses of the work, including the delayed entrance of Sosarme in the story and his minimal influence on the plot's action, and weak character development.  He has also acknowledged the quality of musical inspiration within these limitations.  The duet "Per le porte del Tormento", the popularity of which in Handel's lifetime Dean documents, (and which Handel also used in "Imeneo" (1738–40) was included in nineteenth century Handel anthologies and (in an extract from the 1955 recording) became widely known in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century through the Open University.
  The opera is scored for two oboes, bassoon, two trumpets, two horns, strings and continuo (cello, lute, harpsichord).
caption: The King's Theatre, London, where Sosarme had its first performance
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