In 1737 Farinelli travelled to Madrid. Once in the Spanish capital of the melancholic Bourbon King Philip V, he was invited to quit his contract in London and instead take up permanent residence at the Spanish court (one might quip he left Chelsea for Real Madrid). The celebrated castrato often sang privately for Philip V, and legend has it that Porpora’s ‘Alto Giove’ was one of the monarch’s favourites; Bejun Mehta’s laboured performance tends to place emphasis on episodic moments at the expense of prolonged melodic lines. Farinelli continued serving the next king, Ferdinand VI, until retiring in 1760.

The much-missed Archiv label is relaunched with this selection of mostly orchestral music allegedly associated with Farinelli’s musical direction of lavish entertainments and operas at Aranjuez and Buen Retiro. Scratch the surface of the concept and it disentangles, not least for the inclusion of irrelevant overtures by Jommelli and Traetta (both of them enjoyable). There’s infectious fun from a battery of tinkling percussion and an extrovert wittiness of phrase in excerpts from Baile de las máscaras by Francesco Corradini, who did actually work alongside Farinelli in Madrid. So did Nicola Conforta, whose overture to La festa cinese gets proceedings off with a colourful bang. Perhaps censure for conceptual tenuousness is moderated because Concerto Köln’s zesty punchiness is a good fit for the dynamism of conductor Pablo Heras-Casado – nowhere more compellingly than in CPE Bach’s vibrant Fandango Sinfonia in E minor (no connection to Farinelli but an entertaining piece well worth