Handel - Rodrigo / Banditelli, Piau, Fedi, Müller, Invernizzi, Calvi, Il Complesso Barocco, Curtis

Alan Curtis has assembled an unusually good cast: Caterina Calvi is an excellent--and all too rare--Handel contralto, with admirable flexibility, firm low notes and no matronly quality to the voice; tenor Rufus Müller makes a convincingly courageous and egotistical rebel nobleman, yet retains some of the sweet tone that made him a stand-out member of the Tallis Scholars in earlier years. The three sopranos--Elena Cecchi Fedi as the furious victim of seduction, Sandrine Piau as the virtuous queen, and Roberta Invernizzi as a rebellious young noble--are all exemplary. Then there's magnificent mezzo Gloria Banditelli: her singing is focused and flexible enough to fit right in with period instruments, with a sound both pure and heroic enough to be credible in a heroic castrato role. Curtis has cut a good bit of recitative (included, shown in italics, in the booklet), but then Handel often did the same thing. Moreover, he paces the performance well--sometimes one misses the spark that, say, Marc Minkowski and Paul McCreesh ignite throughout their best Handel performances, but the energy and theatrical involvement never flag. --Matthew Westphal