In November 1772, as the 16-year-old Mozart was preparing to astonish the Milanese with his third operatic work for the Teatro Regio Ducal, his older contemporary, Tommaso Traetta (1727–79) from the Puglia region of Italy, was presenting the premiere of his second opera for the court of Catherine the Great in St Petersburg. Today, the former’s Lucio Silla is probably better known than the latter’s Antigona. But which is the finer work? On the basis of this outstanding new recorded version, I would say that Traetta’s tragedia per musica in three acts far outclasses Mozart’s opera seria for its consistent musical inspiration and sheer theatrical know-how.

The musical world owes a debt of gratitude to French conductor Christophe Rousset not only for the vital, exquisite performances he delivers with the ensembles Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de Chambre de Namur, but for his work in bringing to light neglected masterpieces of Baroque opera. Lully's Bellérophon, premiered in 1679, was a huge success in its time, with an initial run of nine months. Part of its popularity was doubtless due to the parallels that could be drawn between its plot and certain recent exploits of Louis XV, but even the earliest critics recognized the score's uniqueness and exceptional quality within Lully's oeuvre, so it's perhaps surprising that it has never been recorded before.

Another French baroque opera composer, Henry Desmarest, resurfaces after centuries of obscurity. Vénus & Adonis, first seen in 1697 in Paris, was composed in the midst of a scandal, when Desmarest eloped with a young singer who was the daughter of a powerful official. In his absence, he was sentenced to death and thus effectively exiled until his pardon in 1720. The opera’s theme of illicit love seems to have fired Desmarest’s imagination, and the stylish cast, headed by Karine Deshayes and Sébastien Droy, responds in kind. One senses, too, rare involvement in the playing of Les Talens Lyriques. More Desmarest operas await.

Lully's 1685 Roland, on a subject apparently chosen by Louis XIV–its message is that loyalty to one's country and fighting battles is more important and noble than earthly love–was a great hit and played on-and-off in France and other European countries until 1750. The plot involves Angelique's vacillating love for Médor. She vacillates due to the fact that Médor is of "obscure lineage" and therefore beneath her station. He has undying, wild love for her. Roland adores Angelique also, but while she admires his knightliness, she is otherwise not interested. After Médor threatens suicide, Angelique gives in; they marry to great festivity at the close of Act 3.

Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion's despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18th century dances. Like Ovid's Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau's greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet.

Handel's opera recorded live at the Semperoper, Dresden, in June 2000. Equal parts comedy, tragedy and romance, the story revolves around the love both Xerses, King of the Persians, and his brother Arsamenes have for Romilda. Christophe Rousset conducts Les Talens Lyriques, with performances by Paula Rasmussen, Ann Hallenberg, Patricia Bardon, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Matteo Peirone.

Les fêtes de Paphos (The Festivals of Paphos) is an opéra-ballet in three acts (or entrées) by the French composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville. The work was described as a ballet héroïque on the title page of the printed score. Each act had a different librettist. Les fêtes de Paphos was first performed at the Académie royale de musique, Paris on 9 May 1758 and was a popular success. Mondonville recycled material from two of his previous operas for the first two acts, namely Erigone (1747) and Vénus et Adonis (1752), both originally composed for Madame de Pompadour's Théâtre des Petits Cabinets. The title of the work is explained in the preface to the printed score. Paphos was a city in Cyprus sacred to Venus, the goddess of love. "Reunited on the island of Paphos, Venus, Bacchus and Cupid decide to enliven their leisure in such a pleasant location by celebrating their first loves, and this gives rise to the following three acts and the title Les fêtes de Paphos."

Christophe Rousset and Talens Lyriques return to Lully and his seventh opera, Isis. Inspired both by Roman mythology and Ancient Egypt, Isis is a story of love and jealousy. This plot caused a scandal at the Royal Court when Madame de Montespan, who was the King's favorite, saw in it a reference to her own situation, the Sun King being at that time occupied with a new mistress. The work's dramatic intensity provides Lully with many occasions to show his remarkable talent for orchestration. Featuring the Chamber Choir of Namur and a brilliant cast of soloists, this recording revives a neglected gem of the French Baroque repertoire.

Rescue operas are not what one is used to associating with Handel, yet that, in a sense, is what this is. Costanza, a princess of Navarre, has been shipwrecked on Cyprus, where she now awaits the arrival of her betrothed, Richard the Lionheart (yes, the same). The island's tyrannical ruler, Isacio, fancies her for himself, however, and spends the entire opera trying to prevent the intended union from going ahead, first by sending Riccardo his daughter Pulcheria instead, and, when that has failed thanks to Pulcheria's brave entreaties, by imprisoning Costanza and declaring war. Only with his final defeat by Riccardo's army, aided by Pulcheria's own fiancé Oronte, do things finally turn out happily.

Neapolitan music of the 18th century, so important in the formation of the musical lingua franca of the Classical period, is a massively neglected area wherein lie many riches. Despite his greater interest in opera, Leo was maestro di cappella at the Naples royal chapel and composed a good deal of church music, especially towards the end of his life (he died in 1744), in which sound counterpoint and the clarity of modern melodic developments are successfully combined. These are not sterile exercises in ‘old-style’ polyphony, but works of honest, thoroughly Italianate expression.

With more than a million copies sold, the soundtrack of Gérard Corbiau's film 'Farinelli' contributed considerably to the international renown of Les Talens Lyriques, in 1994. Back then the voice of the castrato Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli (1705-1782), was created using a computer to mix the voices of countertenor Derek Lee Ragin and soprano Ewa Mallas-Godlewska. On stage, in 2011, rather than a falsettist, world-renowned mezzo Ann Hallenberg, was chosen by Christophe Rousset to portray the first rock star in the history of music.

François Couperin was the greatest keyboard composer of the French Baroque, and his achievement, in both quality and quantity, is comparable only to Scarlatti's and Bach's. His fourth (and last) book of harpsichord music was published in 1730, a few years before the composer's death, and it represents a summing up of his career as a composer for his favorite instrument. These eight suites (or "ordres") contain fewer works than in the earlier books, but each one is a gem. Christophe Rousset's performances are simply the finest available, both in terms of interpretation and sound. These two discs are a fitting conclusion to a sensational series.

The keyboard works of François Couperin – the most famous of the 18th-century clavecinistes – have never enjoyed quite the same popular revival as those of Scarlatti and Bach. No doubt Couperin’s comparative neglect is due partly to the fact that his intricate ornamental lines transfer awkwardly to the piano; but it is also true that the surface naivety and understated virtuosity of many of his pieces belie their musical substance.

Couperin's First Book of harpsichord pieces is a sort of musical house cleaning, representing the publication of a large number of pre-existing works that had already achieved a measure of popularity in manuscript copies. Couperin followed up his success with three more books published at intervals until the very end of his life. Collectively, these 27 suites of pieces (which the composer called "ordres") represent the pinnacle of French keyboard music, and they had a huge influence on subsequent composers, right down to Debussy and Ravel in our century. Christophe Rousset's series is a landmark in Baroque keyboard performance, and a splendid tribute to one of the epoch's greatest masters.

Recent issues of the Bach partitas on the harpsichord have provoked reservations about the quality of the recordings: the set by Kenneth Gilbert so uncomfortably close to the microphone as to pick up distracting action noise from the instrument, Trevor Pinnock's somewhat fuzzy, Scott Ross's too reverberant to be ideal. So perhaps I may start by commending the admirably warm but clean and natural sound secured by the producer (Chris Sayers)—even in a church (not far from Toulouse)—of the very fine Hemsch harpsichord of 1751 that Rousset has used before.