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.
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 praised the music but criticized the drama as weak, writing that Sosarme enters late, does little, and lacks depth. Dean traced the popularity of the duet "Per le porte del tormento" from its reuse in "Imeneo" (1738–40), through 19th-century anthologies, to its 1955 recording, later used by the
Open University. The opera is scored for two oboes, bassoon, two trumpets, two horns, strings and
continuo (cello, lute, harpsichord). ==Recordings==