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Pure Amina is one of the most touching characters of the bel canto repertoire. The young somnambulist is completely unaware of her condition which loses her the love of her fiancé. Maria Callas was probably her most admirable performer, having won the heart of the Scala’s audience after a legendary series of performances staged by her close friend Luchino Visconti in 1955. Two years later, she would record this milestone studio recording – an absolute reference of Bellini’s discography – with Antonino Votto.

This recording of La Sonnambula is notable on a number of fronts. It's the first recording of the opera based on a 2004 critical edition of the score that confirms the leading role was indeed written for a mezzo-soprano, although it has been performed by sopranos for much of its history. (Among the first Aminas were the celebrated mezzos Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran.) It's also the first recording using period instruments, in this case Orchestra La Scintilla, based at the Basel Opera and conducted by Alessandro de Marchi in an idiomatic and lively reading. And, as the promotional materials trumpet, it's the first recorded collaboration between superstars Cecilia Bartoli and Juan Diego Flórez. Although less hoopla is made of him, the recording also features a superbly lyrical performance by baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo.

Naïve continues its admirable series of complete recordings of Vivaldi's operas with Atenaide, an opera seria that was not successful at its 1728 premiere, and received no further performances during the composer's lifetime. This recording was made as a result of the first modern production, which was presented in the same Florentine theater in which the opera had received its premiere. With an unusually convoluted plot, and lasting over three-and-a-half hours, its unlikely that Atenaide will ever make its way into the repertoire, but especially for the Vivaldi enthusiast and the lover of virtuosic Baroque vocal display, the opera should be very attractive.

In its day La scuola de’ gelosi (1778) was one of the best-known comic operas by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), remaining a box-office hit for decades. All the more astonishing is the fact that it could sink into obscurity. Even Goethe was excited by this masterpiece: “The opera is the audience’s favourite, and the audience is right. It contains an astonishing richness and variety, and the subject is treated with the most exquisite taste. I was moved by every aria.” In the wake of its world premiere in Venice in 1778, La scuola de’ gelosi was performed in opera houses all over Europe, from Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Paris to cities as far away as London and St Petersburg, before it passed into near-oblivion.

Carlo Francesco Cesarini was one of the most important Italian Baroque composers as well as a virtuoso violinist also known as Carlo del Violino. His six cantatas, receiving their first recording here, were regularly performed between 1700 and 1717. They are all taken from Manuscript 2248 of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, a rich anthological collection assembled for Cardinal Pamphili, a major figure in Roman cultural life. These major rediscoveries are performed by soprano Stéphanie Varnerin accompanied by the ensemble L'Astrée led by Giorgio Tabacco.

The chamber cantata flourished in Italy as a counterpart to public opera and oratorio, cultivated by aristocratic patrons for their personal enjoyment. Perhaps because of its essentially private origins, this pervasive Baroque form remains relatively little known today.