The German-born Handel had been resident in London since 1712 and had there enjoyed great success as a composer of Italian operas. His opportunities to set English texts to music had at first been more limited; he had spent the years 1717 to 1719 as composer in residence to the wealthy
Duke of Chandos where he had written church anthems and two stage works,
Acis and Galatea and
Esther; and had composed vocal music to English words for various royal occasions, including a set of
Coronation anthems for
King George II in 1727, which had made a huge impact. In 1731, a performance of the 1718 version of
Esther, a work in English based on a Biblical drama by
Jean Racine, was staged in London without Handel's participation and had proved popular, so Handel revised the work and planned to have it performed at the theatre where his Italian operas were being presented. However the
Bishop of London would not permit a drama based on a Biblical story to be acted out on the stage, and therefore Handel presented
Esther in concert form, thus giving birth to the English oratorio. Such was the success of his oratorios in English that eventually Handel abandoned Italian opera, his last being
Deidamia in 1741, and produced a string of masterpieces of oratorio in English.
Opera seria, the form of Italian opera that Handel composed for London, focused overwhelmingly on solo arias and
recitatives for the star singers and contained very little else; they did not feature separate choruses. With the English oratorios Handel had the opportunity to mix operatic arias in English for the soloists with large choruses of the type that he used in the Coronation anthems. The oratorios found a wider audience among more social classes than the aristocratic audience who had sponsored and enjoyed Handel's Italian operas.
Solomon was widely recognised by commentators of the day as a
eulogy for
Georgian England, with the just and wise King Solomon representing King George II, and the mighty, prosperous kingdom of Israel reflecting the similarly happy state of England at the time of the work's premiere, in the view of its creators. However, a 21st-century commentator has noted that
Solomon was not a great commercial success with London audiences of the time, possibly because of complexities and ambiguities in its portrayal of the central character King Solomon. ==Dramatis personae==