Justice un Love Nicholas Wolterstorff

'Serse' comes late in the Handel opera list, with only two more attempts at the form remaining. Adapted from the libretto originally prepared for Cavalli's 'Xerses' in 1655 (itself a great opera), 'Serse' remains true to its Venetian roots. The action, which is largely comic, moves fluidly through short arias, ariosos and ariettas. Serse is a parody of the self-important ruler; "Ombra mai fu,' possibly Handel's most famous setting of Italian words, is in fact a love song to a plane tree originally intended to be sung by a man who had been castrated. Irony does not go much deeper than this. The characters that surround Serse are an uncommonly varied lot with the plain-speaking Atalanta a particular joy.

The Masque of Alfred - apart of course from its finale "Rule Britannia" - has in the 1990s reached CD. Just two years ago a version was issued with the BBC Music Magazine and now we have this more complete account (though there were several variants in Arne's own day) from Nicholas McGegan, an experienced exponent of 18th Century music, recorded in America and using mainly American performers. And very welcome is it. If offers 76 minutes of music, 25 minutes more than the BBC CD and if the OAE's playing on the latter under Nicholas Kraemer often seems rather superior, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra are fully equal to Arne's demands which include often atmospheric parts for oboes, horns and flute as well as the basic strings. McGegan uses only four solo singers against the BBC's six.

The impressive discography of Handel operas and oratorios from Nicholas McGegan continues with this recording of Radamisto, made following staged performances of the opera at the 1993 Göttingen Handel Festival. Generally speaking, McGegan has derived better results in those sets using the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (as here) than in those made with his Californian forces. The German players sustain his brisk tempi with relative ease, though McGegan’s penchant for spiky staccato and short, snatched phrases rather than long lines does not always do the music full justice. The stars are the countertenor Ralf Popken in the title role and Juliana Gondek as his long-suffering wife, Zenobia.

The recent Glyndbourne staging of this oratorio demonstrated how well it worked as an opera, and this recording by Nicholas McGegan creates a similar dramatic intensity out of the tragic story of oppression and resistance. He finds excellent tempi for the arias, and keeps the recitatives cracking along at a good pace. And though he has a very good ensemble team of soloists, the star of the show is definitely soprano Lorraine Hunt (who, interestingly enough, sang the mezzo role of Irene for Glyndebourne) as Theodora. She uses the rich, throaty quality of her voice to bring out all the terrible pathos of Theodora's plight, while still suggesting that she is a character lit by an inner fire of joy. Unfortunately the acoustic lacks a certain bloom, and this makes the sound world sometimes seem a little flat and dry.

With these songs from seventeenth-century Europe (Monteverdi and Purcell) and modern Latin America (Rodriguez, Jara, and others), two golden ages of song are juxtaposed on De Pasión Mortal . This is a vivid album that invites listeners into this wonderful, evocative music and to reflect on eternal human themes: love, loss, fear, ecstasy, and much more besides. Nicholas Mulroy, Elizabeth Kenny and Toby Carr offer performances of songs that are separated by time and space, but united by much else, and find expression in music full of beauty and unflinching truth. This pairing of old and new conveys a sense that, while the world turns and changes, people do not.

Giustino is the Baroque version of a ‘ripping yarn’. The eponymous hero rises from ploughboy to emperor via an action-packed curriculum vitae that has him seeing visions, routing traitors, fighting bears and even slaying a sea-monster! Written in the autumn of 1736, shortly after Handel had suffered a period of ill-health, Giustino is not among his greatest operas, but it is thoroughly entertaining and offers much fine music. Particularly felicitous are Giustino’s bucolic aria ‘Può ben nascere tra li boschi’ and Anastasio’s lovely ‘O fiero e rio sospetto’. The headlong pace leaves Handel little time to develop the more sensual, amorous side of his music. One exception – and the opera’s most entrancing interlude – is the ravishing love duet in Act II, superbly sung here by Dorothea Röschmann (Arianna) and Dawn Kotoski (Anastasio).

Rodelinda was the first of Handel's operas to be revived in modern times (at Gottingen, in 1920) and the first to be performed in the USA (at Smith College, Northampton. Massachusetts, in 1931), and this summer it adds to its laurels the distinction of being the first Handel opera (as opposed to oratorio) to be staged at Glyndebourne. Composed just after Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano, it must, I think, rank in many people's top half-dozen of the Handel operas, with its complex plot of dynastic intrigue revolving around the powerful, steadfast love of Bertarido (the ousted king of Milan) and his queen Rodelinda: just the kind that unfailingly drew strong music from Handel.

L'opera fu composta nel 1712 e andò in scena per la prima volta il 22 novembre dello stesso anno, sotto la direzione del compositore stesso, al Her Majesty's Theatre di Londra. L'accoglienza fu generalmente negativa, probabilmente a causa delle elevate aspettative che il pubblico nutriva in seguito al successo dell'opera Rinaldo. Un commentatore riporta che "la scenografia rappresentava unicamente l'Arcadia, i costumi erano vecchi e l'opera breve". I ruoli di Mirtillo e Silvio furono interpretati dai castrati Valeriano Pellegrini e Valentino Urbani. L'ouverture è in sei movimenti appare eccessivamente ampia per quei tempi: è verosimile pensare che fosse stata scritta come una suite orchestrale distinta dall'opera.

In a stunning world premiere recording, music director and conductor Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, and an international cast of French Baroque opera stars present Jean-Philippe Rameau’s original 1745 version of Le Temple de la Gloire, with libretto by Voltaire. Presented as a fully staged opera in April 2017, the three sold out performances enjoyed universal critical acclaim from some of the world’s leading publications.