Long before he set out to purge opera of excess and ‘abuses’ with his epoch-making Orfeo and Alceste, Gluck composed reams of Italian opere serie for assorted European theatres. Premiered in Prague in 1750, Ezio uses essentially the same Metastasio libretto set by Handel 18 years earlier – though in deference to ladies in the Prague audience, Gluck tactfully jettisoned several passages denigrating the female sex. The elaborate, vaguely historical plot, set in ancient Rome under Emperor Valentiniano III, is the usual Metastasio brew of politics and amorous intrigue. To simplify, the victorious General Ezio, in love with Fulvia, is framed for attempted murder of Valentiniano (who also inconveniently loves Fulvia) by her treacherous father Massimo, sworn enemy of the Emperor. Predictably, all comes right in the end, with Massimo’s villainy exposed and Fulvia and Ezio happily united.

There are occasional moments of garrulous or bland routine in Gluck’s score (shorn, on these discs, of several arias for the minor characters) but also many numbers of dramatic power and touching lyrical pathos. Curiously for the opera’s baddie, Massimo gets two of the most alluring arias, including a haunting one with oboe obbligato that Gluck (like Handel, an inveterate recycler) later quarried for Orfeo’s scene in the Elysian Fields. Other highlights include Ezio’s tender love song to Fulvia, featuring Gluck’s characteristic blend of spareness and sensuality, a magnificent scena for the despairing Fulvia, and the dramatic trio of conflict that closes Act 2.

As in his Handel recordings, the ever-prolific Alan Curtis conducts with mingled elegance and fire, pacing the drama expertly and drawing vital playing from his period band (not least the first oboe, always crucial in Gluck) that goes beyond mere good style. His cast, several of them Curtis regulars, are shrewdly chosen: youthful of tone, stylistically aware and always intensely alive to the meaning of the text, in aria and recitative. Max Emanuel Cencic, as Valentiniano, fields a full, un-hooty countertenor, while Topi Lehtipuu is suave in Massimo’s lyrical music and splendidly incisive in his Act 2 ‘rage’ aria. Best of all are Sonia Prina in the title-role, her contralto both rich and keen-edged, and Ann Hallenberg, whose high mezzo can veer from plangent lyricism to flame-toned declamation. Her thrilling singing of Fulvia’s Act 3 scena is properly the opera’s emotional climax. While Ezio may not be an out-and-out masterpiece, this first-rate recording, enhanced by an informative essay from Bruce Alan Brown, should scotch the notion that Orfeo appeared like a Gluckian bolt from the blue.