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The Halle Handel Festival brings wonderful Baroque vocalising and playing in this somewhat obscure offering from Handel's early days in Italy. 

Leo Muscato directs an operatic rarity at the Festival Valle d'Itria, with Federico Maria Sardelli leading Orchestra Barocca Modo Antiquo.

Vivaldi's opera Farnace presents a basically insoluble problem: how to produce a more or less complete version. While this is not solved by the Ferrara production, it is strong musically and enjoyable.

Federico Maria Sardelli conducts an historic production of Handel’s first Italian opera for London with energy and Baroque spirit. Teresa Iervolino takes the leading role in a convincing cast.

A masterpiece from one of the Neapolitan School's most important protagonists, this rarely heard opera is musically rewarding but confusingly staged.

Il re pastore seems to be a work that deserves to be included in the repertoire for its undoubted qualities and not only because it foreshadows the genius of the works that will follow.

Three sopranos and three tenors express a catalogue of "affections" in musical numbers full of coloratura and virtuosic effects that are already 100% Mozart despite the young age of the composer.

The imaginative baroque architecture of the Buontalenti Grotto in Palazzo Pitti Boboli Gardens is an inert background to the action in this reprise of one of the first operas.

Though musically played with participation and sensitivitythe, this production was full of jugglers, acrobats, dancers, circus performers and mimes.