Conductor Diego Fasolis and his Coro della Radio Svizzera always can be counted on for a very good show, and this one, featuring two well-known if not necessarily top-drawer Handel works, is no exception. The early Dixit Dominus, with its Vivaldian "De torrente in via" movement and other Italian stylistic elements, is appropriately lively and crisply articulated in the fast sections and fully indulgent of the slow passages, allowing us to hear in gorgeous detail the promising signs of Handel's germinating genius.

If Naples, under the reforming wing of Caravaggio, experienced a golden age in the pictorial arts in the 17th century, the same holds true for musical composition. Antonio Florio unveils for us today the musical treasures of this dazzing era nourished by the expressive opulence of the predecessors of A. Scarlatti. A roster of remarkable soloists gives life and flesh to one of the scores exemplifying Neapolitan devotion. The casting dazzles through its presence and its incantatory illumination: Gloria Banditelli is Rosalia, thrilling, sensual, passionate. La Colomba follows on the style of Provenzale's operas. It solidifies the social ascension of the musician to the court of the viceroy, since the work was premiered at the Palace in 1670 by the figliuoli of the Conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto, of which he was choir director. But this bountiful drama fits into the cycle of other sacred projects by Provenzale: one can attribute to him a "life" of Teresa d'Avila, one of San Gennaro, another of Santa Rosa.

The restoration of this pastoral drama, created in 1721 in Milan, was supervised by French musicologist and Vivaldi specialist Frederic Delamea. These landmark performances from the Nice Baroque Ensemble are lead by Gilbert Bezzina and feature a cast of international soloists including Roberta Invernizzi, Gloria Banditelli, Johan Elwes and Philippe Cantor.

Alessandro Scarlatti was only 24 and had just begun his enormously successful operatic career when he set a libretto by that great Roman patron of the arts, Cardinal Pamphili, on the subject of repentance and divine grace. It was performed before a distinguished audience by a small group of leading singers and instrumentalists of the day in March 1685—the year of the birth of Alessandro's son Domenico (in fact, as a matter of interest, three days before the birth of J. S. Bach). This simple little morality (oratorio is too grandiose a term for it) shows Magdalen torn between youthful pleasures and repentance for hedonistic living: the subject is treated in a sequence of extremely brief arias (and a few duets) and recitatives, which add up to a rather bitty effect, all the more because of seemingly haphazard key-sequences.

La riscoperta dell’oratorio Mosè liberatore del popolo ebreo (1685), per cinque voci, tromba e archi celebra il trecentocinquantesimo anniversario della nascita di Giacomo Antonio Perti, eclettico musicista bolognese nato nel 1661 e morto nel 1756 a 95 anni dopo oltre settant’anni di attività musicale.

Scion of one of Italy’s most musical 17th-century families, Giovanni Bononcini became such a force in an era when the oratorio was king that he rivaled Handel in popularity across the continent. Venturing from Italy to England and back again, Bononcini was branded something of a political malcontent, though the music heard in this set has all of the political dogma of a John Clare poem: which is to say, none at all, a music of mead and meadow, an image that I assume the sylphs on the booklet’s cover are meant to conjure in their contented gazes.

Le cinesi (''The Chinese ladies'') is one of numerous pieces of the kind—generally called azione teatrale or something similar—composed during the eighteenth century for court entertainments.

Sandrine Piau does it again or should I say she did it already! This collection of superb Handel arias from '96 could be considered an earlier version or forerunner of the recently released Handel Opera Seria, and certainly very complementary to it. The ensemble she plays with is different (Fabio Bondi and his charismatic Europa Galante players), possibly somewhat less refined from the "early music" style perspective but this consideration is blown away by the dramatic presence and the stellar precision of this non-pareil Baroque vocalist.

It is probably now or never. With classic older sets vying with a clutch of more recent recordings, there is currently as complete and interesting an array of recordings of Rossini's La Cenerentola as we are likely to get at any one time. Among recent versions, Chailly's new Decca set is self-evidently a powerful contender. Cecilia Bartoli is arguably the most personable and musically accomplished Cenerentola since Teresa Berganza recorded the role with Abbado in 1971; and there is a strong cast of supporting principals, among them Alessandro Corbelli who offers the best characterized Dandini since Bruscantini. (With the added advantage of being far more technically expert in fioriture passages than was his distinguished predecessor.)

Cavalli's Giasone debuted in 1649 in Vienna, and quickly became the most frequently performed of all 17th Century Italian operas. In addition to being highly acclaimed in its day, it was revived no fewer than twenty times over the following forty years throughout Italy. Almost Wagnerian in its length and scope, the work recreates the tale of Jason and the capture of the Golden Fleece. This edition features Rene Jacobs leading Concerto Vocale.

Farnace was apparently one of Vivaldi's favorite operas, because he mounted numerous productions in various cities, and wrote six versions of the score, more than of any of his other operas. The conventions of operatic vocal characterizations that came to be standard – higher voices in the sympathetic roles, and lower voices in villainous roles – had not yet been established, and Farnace features a baritone and contralto in the heroic roles, with a soprano as the villain. Soprano Adriana Fernández shines as the wicked Berenice, who is redeemed at the very last minute. She has a full, creamy voice that she deploys appealing agility and warmth.

Maria Guleghina impresses strongly. To my mind she is Puccini’s ideal ‘tart with a heart for gold’. She has control and sensitivity and she acts everybody off the stage. She’s coy (but with just a hint of being street-wise) in Act I, outrageously flighty and avaricious in Act II, and, at last, contrite in Act IV. Just watch her as she taunts Geronte di Ravoir (a far too gentlemanly Luigi Roni) in Act II and the way she disports herself on the floor of the stage to seduce Des Grieux back to her charms.

Any recording of an opera by Benedetto Marcello will, for many, bring to mind his literary satire, IL TEATRO ALLA MODA, subtitled "a safe and easy method of properly composing and producing Italian operas according to modern practice." Within its pages, no one involved in the creation of opera-librettist, composer, singers, impresario-is spared. In one passage, the composer is admonished to "oblige the impresario to provide a great number of violins, oboes, horns, etc., preferring to let him economize on double basses, for these should not be used except in the preliminary tuning."

Agrippina (HWV 6) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the 1709–10 Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani's libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is an "anti-heroic satirical comedy", full of topical political allusions. Some analysts believe that it reflects Grimani's political and diplomatic rivalry with Pope Clement XI.

Cecilia Bartoli made this recording when she was still in her early 20s, a mezzo with a rich, vibrant voice who not only copes brilliantly with the technical demands but who also gives a winningly provocative characterization. Like the conductor, Bartoli is wonderful at bringing out the fun.