With this new recording, the madly epic and romantic opera, Il Giustino, finally receives its place in the spotlight, something that the history of music has denied it up until now. The fifty-eighth recording and eighteenth opera in the Vivaldi Edition, which began in 2000, solidifies the status of Vivaldi as the greatest of opera composers - and of composers full stop. It needed the talent, charisma and poetic energy of a great conductor to bring back to life this gem, and it is Ottavio Dantone who assumes this mantle.

Fernando is the abandoned first draft of Handel’s opera Sosarme (performed at the King’s Theatre in February 1732)… Curtis’s pacing and shaping of Handel’s music is consistently subtle, astutely rhetorical and firmly connected to the libretto text. Although it might be possible to explore firmer muscularity and create a more vivid sense of surprise in the quicker music, there is something to be said for Curtis’s shrewd reservation of such effects for when it is truly vital for the drama. For instance, Marianna Pizzolato’s powerful arias “Vado al campo” and “Cuor di madre e cuor di moglie” are potently delivered moments of severe agitated passion that are all the more effective for the sweeter elegance that pervades much of this lovely score.

This hilarious contemporary version of Francesco Cavalli's baroque opera Hercules in Love was commissioned on occasion of the marriage of Louis XIV, the Sun King, to Maria Theresa of Spain. The original production took two years to complete and was at the time the greatest show ever performed in Europe. Directed by David Alden, this surreal production is a triumph of commedia buffa resplendent with decorative and symbolic elements, and complemented by Constance Hoffman's exceptional costumes. Led by Ivor Bolton, a master of baroque music, the chorus of De Nederlandse Opera and Concerto Köln give a sublime performance. With Luca Pisaroni's (Ercole) singing being heroic and melodious in turn, and Veronica Cangemi as a splendid Iole, this is an outstanding production by the DNO.

La Fida Ninfa premiered during the Verona carnival of 1732 at the Teatro Filarmonico. The work was composed to help celebrate the opening of the theatre, which had been postponed for two years, since at that time, the city had been surrounded by foreign military troops. The production was spectacular, and included elaborate ballets by Andrea Cattani, a famous ballet master from Poland, as well as sumptuous sets by Francesco Bibiena. “Vivaldi's score is a ravishing one, offering a rewarding sequence of beguiling arias, duets, a trio and a quartet. Sandrine Piau (Licori) and Verónica Cangemi (Morasto) take on the considerable vocal challenges of demanding roles with their usual tonal warmth and bravura, while Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Elpina) provides the necessary emotional contrasts.

Written in 1735 for his protégée Anna Girò, Griselda takes a story from Boccaccio and turns it into a hymn of praise to nobility and constancy. Yet though the story is tired and true, Vivaldi's music is real and vibrant and as attractive as anything in his instrumental works. In this recording by Jean-Christophe Spinosi leading the Matheus Ensemble with Marie-Nicole Lemeux in the title role, Naïve has released another strong argument for the high quality of Vivaldi's operas. Spinosi has a light hand but a dramatic touch and he keeps the music moving even while granting the soloists ample scope to develop their characters.

Diving into Vivaldi's Orlando furioso with Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Matheus Ensemble, and a shockingly good cast is enough to make even the most jaded listener smile. It is fresh, unrelentingly impressive, and entertaining to a fault. The opera is over-plotted: the first paragraph of the synopsis is enough to confuse anyone not taking notes. And listening to the entire thing would amount to more flowery, athletic vocalism than most can stand in one sitting. But those with the remotest interest in Vivaldi opera, or opera at all, will be hard pressed not to marvel at the quality of what's recorded here. Spinosi is a brilliant Vivaldian who pulls sweet-toned lyricism and down-and-dirty sawing from his Matheus Ensemble, making the most of the composer's rich orchestration. And the cast pulls one rabbit after another out of its collective hat, tackling Vivaldi's consummately difficult arias with élan.

Handels operas are now so thoroughly a part of modern musical life that you might think every major opera house welcomes them. But until November 2010, when it introduced an absorbing new production of Alcina, the Vienna Staatsoper resisted them, not having done a Baroque opera since Monteverdis Poppea in the 1960s. The present production boasted an all-star cast of Baroque specialists, a former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Adrian Noble, the highly-acclaimed conductor Marc Minkowski and his Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble in the pit. Adrian Noble places his Alcina into a framework which begins in the magnificent ballroom of the Devonshire-House in London Piccadilly. The legendary Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, stages a play in which she is acting together with her friends, a stage on the stage. Alcina is a great musical experience geared to the Baroque curiosity. Marc Minkowski revives Handels music in an outstanding way.

Had Pergolesi not died young, his name would rank among the most stellar and influential of Italy’s 18th-century composers. Despite the brevity of his life – he died at 26 – Pergolesi created numerous deathless works. In this second album of Claudio Abbado’s Pergolesi Project, the renowned maestro conducts the Missa S. Emidio, Manca la guida al pie, Laudate pueri Dominum, and the Salve Regina in F minor. Abbado’s passion for this music meets these sacred compositions on the exalted level where they were composed.

Die Festspielpremiere von ALCINA im Prinzregententheater am 17. Juli 2005 wurde wie so viele andere Premieren von Barock-Opern zu einem Höhepunkt der Münchner Opernsaison. Wer erinnert sich nicht gerne an die "Poppea", den "Rinaldo" oder natürlich "Giulio Cesare". Mit Anja Harteros und Vesselina Kasarova hatten sich zwei Topstars der internationalen Opernszene in dieser Inszenierung eingefunden. Unter der bewährten Leitung von Ivor Bolton wurde das ganze Ensemble vom Publikum bei jeder Vorstellung mit Ovationen gefeiert, der Nachhall in der Presse war nicht minder euphorisch!

Lynne Dawson is the star of this show. In Act 2, where Ginevra finds herself inexplicably rejected and condemned by everyone, Dawson brings real depth of tone and feeling to her E minor lament, 'Il mio crudel martoro'; in the final act she shines in the desolate miniature 'Io ti bacio' and brings much fire to the outburst 'Sì, morro'. But she never transgresses the canons of Baroque style. Von Otter, too, has much marvellous music – the aria 'Scherza infida' is one of Handel's greatest expressions of grief – and she sings it beautifully, but she isn't really at one with his idiom and seems to lack a natural feeling for the amplitude of Handel's lines. Yet there's much to enjoy here too, the beauty of the actual sound, the immaculate control, the many telling and musicianly touches of phrasing.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Most opera fans are familiar with Gluck the reformist – the composer of Orphée et Eurydice who sought to balance drama and music in his works. But few know his early works which show him to be a master of the Baroque opera seria tradition he later rejected. L'innocenza giustificata, a festa teatrale written in 1755, is one of these works. Its structure – cobbled together from aria texts by Pietro Metastasio, but with new recitatives by Giacomo Durazzo – already shows a desire to create more dramatic continuity and interest than was commonly found in the Baroque period.

Catone in Utica (1737), written for the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, is one of Vivaldi’s last operatic masterpieces. Its splendid score, however, has come down to us incomplete: in fact the first of the three acts is missing. With infinite patience, Jean-Claude Malgoire has reconstructed the missing act, realising the recitative passages complying perfectly to Vivaldi’s stylistic idiom and integrating the missing arias with original arias taken from other operas written by the Red Priest. Thus Catone in Utica is at last available, in a world-première recording, in its complete form.

Vivaldi's first opera, Ottone in Villa (loosely, Ottone's Vacation), is something of an anomaly in the composer's output of largely tragic, heroic works: a pastoral comedy. Written in 1713 when the composer was 35, Ottone demonstrates Vivaldi's instinctive grasp of the operatic form and his gifts for characterization and dramatic development. Naïve continues its admirable series, The Vivaldi Edition, with this outstanding recording of the opera, a real gem. Giovanni Antonini leads Il Giardino Armonico, which plays with gleaming transparency. The performance is wonderfully lively and the opera's dancing energy is conveyed with high spirits and humor. Vivaldi is not a composer usually associated with comedy, so Ottone surprises with its wealth of delightful, sly wit.

This hilarious contemporary version of Francesco Cavalli's baroque opera Hercules in Love was commissioned on occasion of the marriage of Louis XIV, the Sun King, to Maria Theresa of Spain. The original production took two years to complete and was at the time the greatest show ever performed in Europe. Directed by David Alden, this surreal production is a triumph of commedia buffa resplendent with decorative and symbolic elements, and complemented by Constance Hoffman's exceptional costumes. Led by Ivor Bolton, a master of baroque music, the chorus of De Nederlandse Opera and Concerto Köln give a sublime performance. With Luca Pisaroni's (Ercole) singing being heroic and melodious in turn, and Veronica Cangemi as a splendid Iole, this is an outstanding production by the DNO.