Countertenors Filippo Mineccia and Raffaele Pé form a vocally impressive and well-matched duo for this selection of duetti da camera from the first half of the 18th century. Unlike operatic duets, where characters are usually in dialogue with each other or duelling from opposing perspectives, these chamber works frequently present musically equal partners, often performing the same text. As such they broadly follow the development of the solo chamber cantata with familiar recitative and aria structures, and highly nuanced texts.

If that all makes it sound a bit dry, then it will be a relief to know that the music is anything but. This disc opens with Benedetto Marcello’s joyful Felice chi vi mira; ma più felice chi per voi sospira (‘Happy are those that can look at you; but happier are those who sigh for you …’) in which both countertenors bounce between happiness and sighing with evident delight. Their voices are brilliantly agile and suitably extrovert for this sort of cantata, and both singers excel in marrying the delicious onomatopoeic sighing qualities of the Italian text to Marcello’s melodic shapes. Surprisingly, they are less secure in Handel’s chamber duet Caro autor di mia doglia, a work that dates from his early Italian years but is here performed in a later reworking which equalised the register of the two voices. Handel’s mobile bass line underpins two soaring, intertwining voices and his music throbs with heartbreak, but the singers fail to find either stillness or subtlety, instead opting for a relentlessly heroic approach to their upper registers in which the line ‘dolce pena del core’ (‘sweet cause of my aching heart’) feels particularly overblown.

Elsewhere, though, there is much to delight. Listen especially for the glorious harp-playing of Chiara Granata’s prelude to Cristofaro Caresana’s Lamento degli occhi … which also contains some of the best singing on this album. The countertenors are particularly engaging cast as one eyeball each.