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This aria from Shield’s opera Fontainbleau (1784) is a coloratura display piece that rivals those of Mozart’s “Queen of the Night”. Shield composed several such arias for his lead sopranos at Covent Garden, invariably with a demanding concertante part for oboeist William Parke. We can assume that Shield showed Haydn the scores of his “oboe” arias because Haydn is known to have been impressed enough with Shield’s concertante writing to present him with a copy of Pietà di me. This edition, realized orchestrally from the piano score by David Vine, is edited and introduced by Robert Hoskins.