The Carnival of Venice in 1729 was quite unlike any other. Over a period of two months, opera houses went into a frenzy of competition to show off the most famous singers of the day, including the legendary castrato Farinelli who made his astonishing Venetian debut. Several of the most fashionable composers rose to the occasion, writing ravishing music for spectacular productions which often pitted the singers against each other in breathtaking displays of virtuosity. The results were sensational; one tour de force followed another in an atmosphere of fevered excitement and the adoring public lapped it up.

French soprano Sandrine Piau, despite her frequent appearances on Baroque recordings, may not seem a first choice for the sheer athleticism of Handel, but wait until you hear her. Piau substitutes grace, precision, and sheer beauty for brawn, and the results are astonishing. She chooses arias ideally suited to her talents. "Rejoice greatly," from Messiah, is full of spiky flash, and lengthy pieces like "Prophetic raptures swell my breast" (track 12), from Joseph and His Brethren, are beautifully developed, with Piau sliding with impossible smoothness into high notes in the later stages. Passagework in faster pieces is a shower of bright sparks, while in "Sweet bird," from L'allegro, il penseroso, ed il moderato (track 16), you will become deliciously disoriented after a while as to whether it is Piau or one of the instruments providing the bird effects.

Staged for the first time at Teatro Nuovo in Naples in 1826, Don Gregorio is the Neapolitan version of one of Donizetti’s earliest masterpieces, L’ajo nell’imbarazzo (1824). This is the first representation in Italy in modern times, and a world premiere recording. Director Roberto Recchia sets the performance in the 1920s, at a time when restrictions and false morality were strongly linked with Italian political and social situation. In its new adaptation, the work differs from the original version in several aspects, the most important being the insertion of spoken dialogues in Neapolitan dialect in place of the recitatives. But Donizetti’s musical verve remains unchanged as he underlines the very enjoyable farcical situations of this comic work. The characters are inspired by Italian Commedia dell’Arte, but possess at the same time a deeper psychological and human dimension.

Bach's six sonatas for violin and keyboard, written at the Cöthen court where the composer was responsible for instrumental music, are sometimes cited as historical firsts – as the first violin-and-keyboard sonatas to cast the two instruments in equal roles. The designation is a little misleading, for the works had few real successors; it took more than 50 years before violin and keyboard once again took the stage as equals. Their equality in this set is not really a stylistic innovation but rather the result of Bach's tendency to think exhaustively in terms of the potentialities of his instruments. Be that as it may, one must approach a recording of the set with ears open to the contributions of both instrumentalists and how they work together.

The Enea Baroque Orchestra, founded by the mezzo-soprano Francesca Ascioti in 2018, is currently regarded as the best Roman Baroque authority because of the high quality of its musicians. On this album the ensemble turns to Johann Adolf Hasses masterpiece, the Neapolitan Baroque opera Enea in Caonia (Aeneas in Chaonia), a genuine gem within the genre of the serenata. The libretto was inspired by Book III of Vergils Aeneid, the most famous epic poem in Latin literature. It was very fortunate that Hasse and Aeneas crossed paths in Italy, for both of them a new adoptive home, and breathed new life into this work.