Lorenzo Regazzo, Rinaldo Alessandrini - Handel: Arie per basso (2009)

World-renowned bass, Lorenzo Regazzo, one of the finest singers of his generation, performs a recital of Handel operatic arias accompanied by Concerto Italiano under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini.

Two musical titans in the classical world, award-winning Italian bass Lorenzo Regazzo and Italian conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini, are brought together once again to record the greatest operatic arias by George Frederic Handel. Handel, one of the most celebrated operatic composers of the eighteenth century, always remained out of step with the preferences of his era - notably his attachment to the 'natural' male voice in a time when the high voices of women or castratos triumphed everywhere. The programme on this release, covering thirty years of Handelian repertory, beautifully illustrates the way Handel wrote for the bass voice, and demonstrates how he required singers in this register to perform feats immeasurably more challenging than those called for by other continental composers of the period. Lorenzo Regazzo also presents in this programme a mini artist portrait of the bass Giuseppe Maria Boschi, creator of the role of Pallante in Agrippina, and who was to take part in some fifteen London premieres, from Rinaldo (1711) to Tolomeo (1728).