La Partenope is a rich and colourful production, superbly performed here by I Turchini Orchestra and conductor Antonio Florio, world-renowned specialists of Baroque repertoire. In this version comic intermezzi have been added, as was customary in the eighteenth century.

With Antonio Caldara’s 'Morte e sepoltura di Christo', released on Glossa just after a new album devoted to Vivaldi’s late violin concertos, Fabio Biondi returns to the Italian oratorio, another of his specialities. The Venetians Caldara and Vivaldi may have been contemporaries but their career paths led them in different directions, and Caldara was to spend much time working in Mantua and Rome before securing the position of vice-Kapellmeister for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in Vienna.

This is the first recording in the complete Monteverdi cycle with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, made possible by a three-year collaboration between Dynamic and Teatro Real. Luigi Pizzi's attractive and original staging is enhanced by the rich colour of 17th century costumes. The musicians - and Christie himself - also perform in costume, with the conductor clad in a flowing red cloak and white ruffed collar. The DVD also features interviews with Christie, Pizzi and the Opera's two protagonists.

Preceded by a solemn prologue in which Iride admonishes mortals that they should not offend the gods, the story of Cavalli’s Didone comes to life thanks to numerous solo passages of highly varied character and structure, designed both for simple basso continuo support and for a more complex instrumental accompaniment, for five real parts which enjoy some independent moments and which create a diversion from the action or blend in with it in a wholly logical way, intensifying it in a studied, evocative manner.

Following acclaimed discs exploring some of the more fascinating byways of the Italian eighteenth century, Auser Musici and its founder-director Carlo Ipata turn to the man Beethoven regarded as the finest of his contemporaries, Luigi Cherubini. It’s not difficult to understand why Beethoven was so impressed: this is music full of character and seriousness of intent, from the strong-jawed Sinfonia for the opera Armida abandonnata, written when Cherubini was just twenty-two, to the dark drama of the Overture to Démophon (which unaccountably failed to wow the sniffy Parisian audiences). And there are vocal delights too, showcasing a virtuosity that looks forward to Rossini and sung here with effortless agility by Maria Grazia Schiavo.

Found by chance in a Florence archive, Germanico may be the first work that Handel composed in Italy. An allegory on the War of the Spanish Succession, it is low on incident but long on suavity. Harpsichordist Ottaviano Tenerani has pieced together a putative provenance from the scant documentation of Handel’s movements before 1709. Venetian watermarks on the manuscript paper, and the flux of pro- and anti-Habsburg feeling in Italy at the time, suggest to Tenerani that Germanico was written for private performance in 1706 and is indeed, as the anonymous copyist wrote, ‘Del Sigr Hendl’. If the discovery of Germanico marks a career boost for Tenerani, he has repaid the favour in this stylishly executed performance by the ensemble Il Rossignolo.

Très jeune, Giovanni Paisiello connut un grand succès, aussi bien en Italie qu'à l'étranger. Il est surtout réputé pour son Barbier de Séville (1782) d'après Beaumarchais, déjà, qui influença bien évidemment Rossini et aussi Mozart pour ses Noces de Figaro. Ludwig van Beethoven lui-même utilisera une aria La Molinara "Nel cor piu non mi sento" pour composer une de ses oeuvres. Un autre opéra, créé en 1789, connut un renouveau récent grâce à la superbe interprétation du rôle-titre par Cecilia Bartoli : Nina, ossia la Pazza per Amore.

Domènech Terradellas, born in Barcelona in 1713, finished his studies in Naples, with Durante amongst others, and became one of the most popular composers of his time. His operas rivalled those of Handel, Hasse and Jommelli and were to be seen on the major stages of Rome, Naples, Florence,Venice but also London, and his name was revered as a model for good taste by Rousseau and Burney. After his premature death in 1751, the Catalan composer fell into oblivion and it is only recently that first class interpreters have showed an interest in him once again.