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La Compagnia del Madrigale releases another imaginative album on Glossa, turning to a late composition by Orazio Vecchi, Le veglie di Siena from 1604.

The extraordinary series of 1998-2006 recordings of the nine published books of madrigals by Monteverdi, from Claudio Cavina and the Italian ensemble La Venexiana, is now available in limited-time and limited-number boxed set form from Glossa. This multi-award-winning cycle set new standards in textual declamation, rhetorical color and harmonic refinement. Also included is the Live in Corsica album of Monteverdi madrigals (2002) and a newly-written essay by original series essayist Stefano Russomanno of which all, along with full texts and translations in PDF form, are also included.

Composed in three different moments (in Italy, Hanover and London), these delicious duets contain a lot of music that Handel later reused in great works like The Messiah, The Passion of Brockers, Solomon, Jubilate de Chandos, Alcina, Aquatic Music, Esther, Belshazzar , Judas Macabeo, Deborah or the Jubilate of Utrecht, to name a few. Technically very difficult, these jewels contain movements of great beauty and passages of enormous virtuosity that demonstrate not only the brilliance of Handel's vocal writing, but its insurmountable melodic sense and musical imagery. Rossana Bertini and Claudio Cavina, founders of Concerto Italiano, demonstrate the reason why they are considered among the most important specialists in baroque singing.

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.

Linn's Vivaldi: L'Amore per Elvira, featuring the English group La Serenissima under the direction of Adrian Chandler, has quite a bit to offer the Vivaldi fancier. First are Chandler's excellent reconstructions of two of the fragmentary "Graz" violin sonatas that have not come down with their continuo parts intact. Chandler has filled in the missing music with entirely satisfactory replacements that appear to be seamlessly Vivaldian, rendering these works into a listenable form for the first time.

Carlo Gesualdo is one of the most fascinating composers. It is hard to escape the temptation of seeing in his madrigals the tortured reflection of his psyche, beginning with the murder committed in 1590, when he caught his first wife Maria d’Avalos in blatant adultery with her lover Fabrizio Carafa. The madrigals of the Fifth and Sixth Books are to Gesualdo what the black paintings are to Goya: works conceived in a state of solitude, with no fetters on the artist’s imagination, born in enclosed spaces and used to moving around in their gloom. It is a music fitting to resonate in remote and unusual places.