Davide Perez - Career in Portugal

Career in Portugal

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. The ambition of the recently crowned Portuguese king was to depart from his father's musical policy, almost uniquely concerned with church music, and to give Italian opera a central position in the court. Sumptuous scenic treatment was the rule, and Perez’s operas were mounted by such famous designers as Berardi, Dorneau, Bouteux and Galli-Bibiena. Equally important were the great singers who appeared at the Portuguese court, including Raaf, Elisi, Manzuoli, Gizziello and Caffarelli.

The terrible earthquake that destroyed Lisbon on 1 November 1755, changed forever Perez’s output. The court withdrew from the theatres, no operas were produced for the next seven years, and thereafter only in a less spectacular fashion. During the last 23 years of his life, Perez wrote just three new operas. Instead he composed a huge amount of church music, covering almost all the rituals and practices of the two main musical chapels of Lisbon, the Royal and the Seminário da Patriarcal. He never left Portugal, so that his international acclaim slowly declined. Still, Gerber noted that since 1766 Perez’s compositions were known and in demand in Germany and that he was in 1790 ‘one of the most celebrated and beloved composers among the Italian masters … one of the latest composers who maintained the rigour of counterpoint’. J. C. Krause named Hasse, Perez and Paisiello as satisfactory models. 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. His music, especially the religious, was widely copied in Italy. During the last four years of his life Perez suffered from a chronic disease, eventually losing his sight, but continued to compose. In 1778 his pupil, now Queen Maria I of Portugal, made him a Knight of the Order of Christ; when he died in Lisbon, she ordered an elaborate funeral at the Crown’s expense.