Handel: Arminio. (Opera And Oratorio).

[] Genaux, McGreevy, Labelle, Custer; Petroni, Buwalda, Ristori; Il Complesso Barocco, Curtis. Text and translation. Virgin 5 45461 2 (2)

"Handel's Arminio has had an unlucky past," concedes Alan Curtis in the notes to this recording, advertised as a world premiere. Composed in 1736 in little more than a fortnight, Arminio was performed a handful of times, then promptly vanished from the stage for nearly 250 years. Based on episodes from Tacitus, the opera relates the amorous and diplomatic adventures of the German prince Hermann (Arminio), perhaps best remembered for having led the massacre of several Roman legions in the Teutoberger forest in 9 A.D. Fortunately, he is a decidedly more good-natured fellow in Antonio Salvi's libretto (also set by Scarlatti and Hasse). Imprisoned and condemned to death several times, Arminio is finally reunited with his wife, Tusnelda, and marries his sister Ramise off to Sigismondo, son of the treacherous Segeste, who is magnanimously pardoned despite having plotted to betray Arminio to the Roman general Varo. In short, Arminio's is a typically labyrinthine eighteenth-century plot, made all the more muddled by Handel's having cut about a thousand lines of recitative from Salvi's original text.

Arminio's libretto is hardly a model of clarity, but this set does make abundantly clear why mezzo Vivica Genaux is widely hailed as one of ...