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Handel composed Agrippina at the end of a three-year sojourn in Italy. It premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709. It proved an immediate success and an unprecedented series of 27 consecutive performances followed. Observers praised the quality of the music—much of which, in keeping with the contemporary custom, had been borrowed and adapted from other works, including the works of other composers. Despite the evident public enthusiasm for the work, Handel did not promote further stagings.

Commozione umana e bel canto barocco nel più fortunato dei drammi sacri di Perti, composto nel 1685, poi rimaneggiato e rieseguito più volte fino al 1718.

King David, soldier and poet, was for centuries a figure as attractive to musicians as to artists like the one who sculpted the big unclothed guy in Florence's Uffizi galleries. Benedetto Marcello's settings of the Psalms of David, part of a large collection called the Estro poetico-armonico, were famous during his own lifetime (1686-1739) and beyond, but have been strangely neglected in recent years even as more obscure Baroque repertories have flourished. When they are heard, it is usually because of their exotic Jewish component.

The Naxos label has done a wonderful job of providing opera-lovers with inexpensive recordings of both repertory and rare operas. This recording of Rossini's perennial "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" sets a standard which will be hard to sustain. The orchestra, a group of players from the Hungarian State Opera, are lively and alert to the musical presentation desired by conductor Humburg. The soloists are, with few exceptions, wonderful. Roberto Servile in the title role is as good as modern baritones get in the role–he sings well and is having a marvelous time of it. Franco de Grandis sings splendidly as Don Basilio. Sonia Ganassi, singing Rosina, brings good coloratura technique to Rossini's sometimes fiendish writing, but somehow lacks those indefinable qualities which make a great Rosina…

A 50 CD Original Jackets Collection celebrating the greatest Classical and early romantic recordings from Decca’s pioneering early music label L’Oiseau-Lyre. The box features orchestral, vocal, chamber and solo piano music from Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, Malcolm Binns, Andras Schiff, the Music Party, the Esterhazy Quartet among others.

Born in 1804, Louise Farrenc became a professional-standard pianist while still a teenager, and later music teacher to the household of the Duke d’Orléans and from 1842 professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire. Her substantial legacy of composition was largely forgotten after her death in 1875 and is only now being revived. She wrote mainly in the field of orchestral and chamber music: ‘I would defy anyone,’ says the pianist Linda Di Carlo in a personal introduction to this new recording of Farrenc’s music for violin and piano, ‘to cast aspersions on the chamber music in particular on the grounds of her gender.’