Davide Perez
From 1734 date his first known pieces, the Latin cantatas Ilium Palladio astu Subducto Expugnatum and Palladium performed in Palermo's Collegio della Società di Gesù, for the laurelling festivities.
His first opera, La nemica amante, was composed for the king's birthday on 4 November 1735 and presented in the gardens of the Neapolitan royal palace and later in the Teatro S Bartolomeo.
In the libretto's dedication the impresario of the theatre, Angelo Carasale, referred to Perez and Pergolesi as 'dei buoni virtuosi di questa città'.
Opera was not an easy enterprise in Palermo and, until 1745, most of Perez's compositions as chapel master there were cantatas or serenatas and church music - including in 1742 a setting of Metastasio's oratorio La Passione di Gesù Cristo.
In 1752 King José I of Portugal invited Perez to become mestre de capela and music master to the royal princesses, a position he occupied until his death.
The annual stipend of 2:000$000 (two contos de réis), coupled with the excellent musical and theatrical resources of the Portuguese court, undoubtedly influenced his decision to remain in Lisbon.
In 1774 Perez became by acclamation a member of the London Academy of Ancient Music, and had the only full-scale piece printed in his lifetime, the Mattutino de' Morti (his third set of the Office of the Dead), published there by Bremner.
Excerpts from Arminio, La Didone abbandonata, Ezio, Farnace, Solimano and Vologeso were published in London by John Walsh, and at least 24 exist in manuscript.
[5] With Demofoonte in 1752, as Perez began his lengthy residence in Lisbon, the monumental idiom declined and a sentimental style gained increasing prominence, with a resultant clarity of texture, greater symmetry of phrase, frequent rhythmic motives and emphasis on the pathetic.
It contains 14 dal segno arias, one cavatina and six accompanied recitatives, the scope and procedures of which are exceptional; several times the individual numbers are integrated into large-scale scene complexes.
Kretzschmar (1919) claimed that Solimano 'belongs under the heading of masterworks ... richness of invention and of feeling, originality of means and of form, everything is therein, which makes an art great' and 'if all opera composers of the Neapolitan school had been of his stamp, there would have been no need of a Gluck’.
The two long periods of employment Perez had during his life gave him enormous opportunities to write for the church, and religious music represents the largest and most elaborate part of his output.
For example, the mass dated 24 February 1740 is scored for two choirs (the final 'cum Sancto Spiritu' is a ten voice fugue), full strings divided, in some sections, in two orchestras, woodwinds (no clarinets), horns and trumpets in pairs.
In this period, Perez treated solo voices in a manner similar to operatic arias, most fugues or fugato sections have very symmetrical entries of themes, and the pieces in the so-called stile antico are conservative in harmony and notation.
Published by the Teatro Massimo of Palermo, it has the following articles, and their English translations, together with the first recording of his music, the oratory Il martirio di San Bartolomeo:
