CANTATAS AND OPERAS – the twin pillars of secular vocal music of the baroque period. Few composers – though there are some notable exceptions – eschewed these genres if only because a set of cantatas, engraved or copied professionally and strategically dedicated, could be a comparatively inexpensive starting point for a career while opera lured with prospects of fame and fortune.

Andrea Marcon and La Cetra Barockorchester & Vokalensemble Basel sparkle in this new release of Handel's forgotten masterpiece Parnasso in testa, recorded shortly before their hugely successful Netherlands premiere of the opera in November 2016.

The banning of opera performances during Lent in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Rome meant that composers had to turn their attention to biblical subjects. However there is no sense that either composer or librettist felt at all limited in their subject matter, judging from the extraordinarily inventive oratorios that were produced during this time. Scarlatti’s work tells the dramatic story of David and Goliath. Whilst the biblical account relays the story in a few sentences, the anonymous librettist of Davidis pugna et victoria expands upon these to create an extensive libretto, with the characters fully developed and explored.

The tale of ill-fated Dido and her Aeneas, as recounted by Virgil, fascinated the 18th century English, who saw it as relevant to the royal machinations they had experienced over the previous hundred years. The glorious economy of Purcell's version was never matched, but numerous versions of the setting by famed Italian librettist Pietro Metastasio were performed on London stages. Handel gets top billing in the graphics here, but in fact this Didone Abbandonata is a work by the Italian composer Leonardo Vinci, who died at age 40 in 1730 before his influence was fully appreciated.