The final production of the 1764-65 Italian opera season at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket was another ‘pasticcio’ opera, Solimano. The plot concerns romantic intrigue and treachery during the ancient war between Turkey and Persia, but only five arias, all of which had been lifted from existing works, have survived—by Vento, Pescetti, De Majo, Pergolesi and Perez.

Davide Perez was born in Naples, to parents of Spanish descent, in 1711. Having spent his early career in Italy, he moved in 1752 to Lisbon, where he became Kapellmeister to King José I, and where he worked with the celebrated castrato Manzuoli. He came to London in 1755 for a ‘pasticcio’ of Ezio to which he had contributed some arias, but he soon returned to Lisbon, where he died in 1778. It was presumably Manzuoli’s decision to incorporate 'Se non ti moro a lato' into Solimano. This noble, tender aria is actually a setting of text from Metastasio’s Adriano in Siria, which had been presented at the King’s Theatre just four months previously in J C Bach’s setting.

from notes by Ian Page © 2018