Handel: Italian Cantatas

In 1706, 21-year-old Handel arrived in Italy as a prodigious celebrity, already having caught the eye and won the patronage of the Medici family in Florence. Further honors and rewards were heaped on him when he moved to Rome the following year and came under the sponsorship of the most cultured and influential of the city’s noble families. It was for them that he wrote a string of secular cantatas, on time-honored and popular themes of arcadian and amorous bliss. These Roman cantatas have received more attention from scholars and performers in recent years, but the four presented here are still relatively unfamiliar, beginning with the brief, hunting-themed Diana cacciatrice HWV79. This cantata’s striking feature is an aria with echo soprano and trumpet solo, while Alpestre monte is an anguished tale of betrayal and suicide, including a pair of ravishing arias (again for soprano). Faithfulness is once more the vexed question posed by the album’s best-known cantata, Tu fedel? Tu costan