Supreme master of the Baroque concerto and one of the finest composers of sacred music, Vivaldi is now also being rediscovered as an opera composer of genius. Some credit for this must go to Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco, whose performances of Giustino since 1985 have made this colourful and dramatic work the most widely played of Vivaldi's operas in modern times. Giustino contains an endless flow of Vivaldian melodic inspiration and inventive orchestration; the score calls for a psaltery and for birdsong, while the goddess Fortune descends to the tune of Spring from the Four Seasons. This first recording is based on a concert performance in Rotterdam in 2001; the fine cast is headed by Dominique Labelle as the empress Arianna and Francesca Provvisionato as the plough-boy emperor Giustino.

This delectable work, premiered in 1721, shows composer Alessandro Scarlatti at his most brilliantly varied. Solo passages are punctuated with choral interjections and vice-versa, an antiphon duet for oboe and the lovely soprano Suzanne Ryden at first seems like one between two singers; Scarlatti fools the ear. Soprano Dominique Labelle brings a grace to her fluent singing in both solo and ensemble passages which manages to be energetic and tender at once. The setting of the Dixit Dominus never rests; a tenor solo is interrupted by the chorus; an intricate soprano-soprano-counter-tenor trio in the "Dominus a dextris" is rendered even more complex by the chorus, which then, in an entirely different meter, nervously jumps its way to the end and then melts into a gentle baritone solo, with long, legato lines.

Den auf Ludovico Ariosts „Orlando furioso“ (Der rasende Roland/1516) basierenden Stoff hatte ein unbekannter Bearbeiter nach dem Libretto von Carlo Sigismondo Capece (Rom 1711) erstellt und eine ganze Reihe Veränderungen vorgenommen, die Händels Oper zu einer seiner originellsten Londoner Opern werden ließ.

Der Garant für die hohe musikalische Qualität der Produktion war Festspielleiter Nicholas McGegan. Diese Rodelinda bestach durch eine differenzierte und ungeheuer lebendige Interpretation von Händels Musik. Mit dem Orchester Concerto Köln stand ihm auch eines der besten "Barock-" und Opernorchester zur Verfügung, das in dieser Rodelinda vor allem die lyrischen Dimensionen des Werkes genussvoll gestaltete.

Diana Moore lends her youth and tight vibrato to Rinaldo; a greater vocal presence should come with the experience. Cyndia Sieden is an ideal Almirena, as well as Dominique Labelle in the often poorly served and yet essential role of the magician Armida. Andnew Foster-Williams and Cecile van de Sant excel and carry Argante and Goffredo to a rare level of emotion for one and dramatic consistency for the other. The counter-tenor Chnistophe Dumaux is a perfect Eustazio. Finally, under the lively, dramatic and witty direction of Nicholas McGegan, the Concerto Köln is simply phenomenal.

Monsigny and Sedaine's brilliant opera-cotnique Le Deserteur, was an immediate and lasting success for its melodic charms and musical variety, its blend of comedy with moments of great sentiment and pathos, and its intellectual radicalism prefiguring the humanitarian ideas of the 19th century Romantics. This recording features the musical items only from this forerunner of the 'rescue' opera, in which the heroine Louise extricates her fiance Alexis from prison and a death sentence.

At the age of 27 Peter Sellars was hailed as a wunderkind of the U.S. theater and was already the general manager of the American National Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. In his productions, Sellars brings out the timelessness and topicality of the works with such naturalness that he arouses interest around the world and stimulates lively discussions as to whether he is brilliantly modernizing the works or brutally maiming them. Besides "Don Giovanni," Sellars has also staged "Le nozze di Figaro" and "Cosi fan tutte" and moved their stories to present-day New York, whereby, however, he invented a new world for each opera.

Joyce Di Donato and Maite Beaumont are outstanding as the devoted couple tormented by Tiridate’s abuse of power. Their flexible and agile voices are ideally displayed in the opening scenes of Act 2 – Beaumont’s sublime ‘Quando mai’ followed by Di Donato’s powerful ‘Ombra cara’. Patrizia Ciofi is suited to the moods of the Tiridate’s long-suffering wife. Dominique Labelle is the most rounded and ideally equipped Handel soprano in the cast: the music effortlessly trips off her tongue in ‘Mirerò quel vago volto’…

One of Handel’s rarer operas, Arminio, set at the time of the Roman Empire, was first performed in 1737. “On the evidence of this very fine recording,” said Gramophone when this performance first appeared, “it can stand among the best of the Handel operas, full of beautiful and imaginative things.” Conducting a cast led by the virtuosic Vivica Genaux in the title role – composed for the castrato Domenico Annibali – is the renowned Handel specialist Alan Curtis.

Written in 1740, Deidamia was the last of Handel’s Italian operas; thereafter he relinquished the form and turned his creative energies to English oratorio. The libretto is based on the myth of Achilles’ boyhood: disguised as a girl on the island of Scyros to escape his fate at Troy, Achilles is unmasked by Ulysses and joins the war, abandoning his lover Deidamia. Despite its heroic subject Deidamia is written with a light, almost comic touch, Deidamia herself providing a central seriousness as she moves from the ecstasies of young love to a tragic maturity, forced to release the boy she loves to his inevitable death. Simone Kermes is Deidamia and Anna Bonitatibus her cynical adversary Ulysses; Alan Curtis’ new recording reveals the many beauties of a very human and appealing work that marks a wistful end to the golden age of Baroque opera.

The present recording honors three important composers celebrating major anniversaries in 2009: Handel, Mendelssohn and Haydn. George Frideric Handel’s Dettinger Te Deum is presented here not in its original version, but rather in an arrangement by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who rendered outstanding service to music not only through the revival of Bach’s choral works, but also through those of Handel. In addition, The Storm, the little-known choral work by Joseph Haydn, is also to be heard here. He composed it during his first visit to England and later arranged it for a large ensemble.

The recordings are typical DHM with superb clarity and dynamic range. The mastering to digital is excellent, and the booklet accompanying the series, while brief, is informative. The only unifying these here is baroque Italian composers, but it's extremely easy to fill a collection ten times this size with material from that category. What we end up with in these ten discs is a lovely mix of known and unknown, each pleasant to listen to and discover, and there's no listener fatigue at all working through these discs.