CCMusic.com

Fabio Bonizzoni returns with his long-awaited new recording of Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo which serves both as a pendant for his award-winning series of Handel Cantatas for Glossa and as a further exploration from him into the serenata form (which has already brought forward gems from Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti). Who better to team up once again with Bonizzoni - and performing the role of the luckless shepherd Aci - than that scintillating soprano Roberta Invernizzi, whose captivating contributions to the Handel series from La Rison Anza as well as her just-released Neapolitan Baroque music travels with Antonio Florio in I Viaggi di Faustina have been drawing powerful critical plaudits and inciting listener joy in equal measure. Joining Roberta Invernizzi for the dramatic energy called upon in Handel's virtuosic and ebullient score, written for a 1708 wedding whilst he was in Naples (Carlo Vitali sets the scene in his enjoyably discursive booklet essay) are the Argentinean bass Lisandro Abadie - summoned to demonstrate an awe-inspiring range that well becomes the monstrous nature of Polifemo - and French mezzo Blandine Staskiewicz, admirably suited to portray Galatea's plaintive charms. Not least among the attractions of this new Glossa release are the demands placed by the young Handel on the instrumental forces at his disposal and here triumphantly delivered by a La Rison Anza in exuberant form, in a recording made in Saint Michel en Thierache in France.