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.

Countertenor Derek Lee Ragin is somewhat better known for his portrayals on the operatic stage than for the many concerts he has appeared in. His repertory is amazingly broad, encompassing works by Baroque composers – Handel, in particular – as well as twentieth century ones, like Benjamin Britten and György Ligeti.
His career as a singer flourished quickly, with an official operatic debut in 1983 at the Innsbruck Festwoche der Alten Musik in Cesti's Il Tito. After vocal study in Amsterdam he won first prize in the ARD International Music Competition (1986). Two years later he debuted at the Met singing Nirenus in Handel's Giulio Cesare.

After his immigration to the west in 1991, Giya Kancheli abandoned the expansive, symphonic approach he had cultivated during his years in Georgia, and opted instead to compose music for smaller, more manageable ensembles. The works on this ECM New Series disc reflect Kancheli's changed course and his simplified, if still wide-ranging, palette. Diplipito is a cryptic term, coined by poet Joseph Brodsky to mean "my work of silence, my mute creation," and Kancheli uses it to suggest a neutral state between expression and meaninglessness, implied in the singer's indistinguishable words and the cello's vaguely articulated lines.

Teseo (HWV 9) is an opera seria with music by George Frideric Handel, the only Handel opera that is in five acts. The Italian-language libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Philippe Quinault's Thésée. It was Handel's third London opera, intended to follow the success of Rinaldo after the unpopular Il pastor fido. First performed on 10 January 1713,Teseo featured "magical" effects such as flying dragons, transformation scenes and apparitions and had a cast of notable Italian opera singers. It was a success with London audiences, receiving thirteen performances even though the stage machinery for the "magical" effects broke down, and would have received more performances had not one of the theatre's managers run away with the box office receipts.

An exact contemporary of Haydn, Franz Ignaz Beck (1734-1809) was a pupil of Stamitz in Mannheim, but lived and worked mainly in Bordeaux, where he was rated highly. Documented information about Beck is meagre and the 3-page introduction is unable to date this Stabat Mater, which is reckoned his masterpiece. It failed initially at Versailles and caused something of a furore, because of his forward looking harmonic modulations; the orchestra sabotaged his instructions for extreme dynamic contrasts. It points towards Berlioz in its originalty and I fully endorse the commentator's claim that Beck is another neglected composer whose music, once heard, demonstrates, yet again, that the accepted canon of 'great' composers, with most of the others cast into oblivion, is misleading and regrettable.

Fux was a prolific composer of vocal and instrumental music. His works include 19 operas, of which Costanza e fortezza (1723) is notable; 29 partitas, including the Concentus musico-instrumentalis (1701); 10 oratorios; and about 80 masses, of which the Missa canonica, (1708), written in canon. His book Gradus ad Parnassum" (1725; Steps to Parnassus) attempted to systematize contrapuntal practices. It was long the standard textbook on counterpoint and was studied by Wolfgang A. Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and other 18th-century composers.

Saul is the fourth of Handel’s English oratorios, written in 1738–39 as his career as a composer of Italian opera was drawing to a close. His librettist was Charles Jennens, who would eventually provide texts for L’allegro, Messiah , and Belshazzar. It is clear that, in the wake of a failed subscription to an Italian opera season, Handel intended Saul to take London by storm. The score calls for a huge orchestra, including trombones, carillon, a large organ, and double-bass kettledrums. This splendid recording, first issued in 1991, is of a live performance originally presented at the Göttingen Handel Festival in June 1989.

This welcome mid-priced reissue of Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques 1994 Fnac Music recording of Handel s Scipione features a cast of stellar singers. Their scintillating performance was universally praised upon its initial release, and this version remains the only available recording. Scipione is an opera in three acts based on a libretto by Paolo Antonio Rolli, composed for the Royal Academy of Music in 1726. It was based upon the life of Roman General Scipio Africanus. Handel revived the opera in 1730, but it did not receive another production until 1967. Christophe Rousset and his band play gorgeously and with great energy.

It is extremely difficult nowadays to reproduce the sound castrato singers where capable of doing at their time and, too often, one finds voices that are too nasal or merely good falsettos. But in many of the performances in this CD one can let the imagination wander and almost imagine you are in the 18th century. In particular, the performance of James Bowmann is outstanding. Also very special the performace of Charpentier 'Salve Regina' by Gerard Lesne and the others; this of course enhanced by the exquisite sensibility of the director Jordi Saval. Also, the duo of Derek Lee Ragin and Ewa Mallas-Godlewska in 'Son qual nave ch'agitata' is so exquisite it brings tears to your eyes.

Terpsicore (HWV)(8b) is a prologue in the form of an opéra-ballet by George Frideric Handel. Handel composed it in 1734 for a revision of his opera Il pastor fido which had first been presented in 1712. The revision of Il pastor fido with Terpsicore as the prologue was first performed on 9 November 1734 at Covent Garden theatre in London, opening Handel's first season in that newly built theatre. Terpsicore mixes dance along with solo and choral singing and was patterned after models in French operas, a particular source being Les festes grecques et romaines by Louis Fuzelier and Colin de Blamont, first presented in Paris in 1723. The work featured the celebrated French dancer Marie Sallé as well as stars of Handel's Italian operas and was a success with audiences of the day.

Agrippina – a portrayal of lust and power set in first century Rome – was first performed in December 1709 at the Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. This "arrangement" by John Eliot Gardiner was recorded in 1991/2 in London and has now been re-released. It was Handel's second and last opera to be composed during his time in Italy, from 1706 to 1710. Written against some resistance (the composer at first saw "no good reason" to write (such) an opera) in three weeks while in Venice, it represented the first such popular acclaim of Handel's career being performed over two dozen times in succession.

As well as recording for, and eventually publicly falling out with, Deutsche Grammophon, John Eliot Gardiner made a series of recordings for Erato, which Warner Classics are now bundling together at bargain price. Pairing the opera Tamerlano with the joyously exuberant choral setting of Milton (with a disc of ballet music from the operas too) makes no obvious sense, except that both rank among Gardiner's finest Handel performances; and his versions of each (L'Allegro from 1981, Tamerlano from five years later) arguably remain the most recommendable in the current catalogue. The cast in Tamerlano is led by a pair of outstanding counter tenors, Derek Ragin and Michael Chance, then both at the start of their careers, with tenor Nigel Robson as Bajazet, while the soloists in L'Allegro include Marie McLaughlin, Jennifer Smith and Martyn Hill; dramatic energy and vitality course through both performances.

One can easily appreciate this early William Christie recording with Capella Coloniensis, a group originally formed in 1954 (!) to perform baroque works in historically informed performances. Christie masters this orchestra well, and the playing is impeccable. The casting is excellent, including some of the great singers of the time: Emma Kirkby, in her prime, Agnes Mellon, Dominique Visse and David Cordier, among others. There is even a male soprano, Randall K. Wong, a rare type of singer indeed.

…Gardiner's account of the Vienna Orfeo ed Euridice is peerless. One soon loses all sense of its being a period-instrument performance at all, so profound, at times overwhelming is its impact - so utterly right. In detail after detail - hauntingly poetic offstage instrumental complement, perfectly positioned in the drama (and perfectly captured by the excellent Philips recording); superbly stirring brass playing, which makes every entry a dramatic event; choral singing extraordinarily light in weight yet rich in emotional substance; exquisitely refined dance movements - and in sustainment of a delicately tenebrous, uniquely Gluckian atmosphere throughout, Gardiner's command of an opera championed since his first London concert performance, 21 years ago, is revealed as simply larger and fuller than almost anyone else's.

When this set appeared it pushed all the other recorded versions of Giulio Cesare aside, and now, examining it again and even finding some things to argue with, it maintains that supreme position. The opera is given complete and all the roles are sung in their original octaves (no bass-baritone Caesar, for instance). René Jacobs' tempos are ideal for each dramatic situation, and if the recitatives have a formality that slows them down somewhat, well, we are dealing with Caesar, Cleopatra, and very grand historic deeds. Both orchestra and singers embellish their written lines, and from this vantage point, those embellishments seem very tame–but they're still welcome, highly musical, and apt.