While the English pastoral Acis and Galatea has long been a favourite, its Neapolitan counterpart of 1708 is still a Handelian rarity. Yet, as with so much of the music from his Italian sojourn, its colour, vitality and melodic allure confirm that the brilliant young Saxon had absorbed all that Italy had to offer him: in, say, the voluptuous melancholy of Galatea’s opening solo, Aci’s delicious ‘birdsong’ aria, or his dying lament, with its gentle string dissonances (shades here of the ‘De torrente’ duet from Dixit Dominus). The Cyclops Polifemo is a more complex figure than his English equivalent, more grotesque, more tormented and inclined to bouts of solitary brooding. He inspired an extravagantly wide-ranging part full of monstrous leaps, above all in his aria about a bemused butterfly, ‘Fra l’ombre e gli orrori’ (later recycled in Sosarme), where at one point the voice plunges two and a half octaves from treble A flat to subterranean D – surely an all-time bass record!

Any new version of this enchanting Arcadian serenata has to compete with Emmanuelle Haïm’s superb Virgin recording with soloists Sandrine Piau, Sara Mingardo and Laurent Naouri. In a role originally composed for soprano castrato (and thus curiously pitched higher than Galatea’s contralto), Roberta Invernizzi matches Piau in sweetness and agility, and surpasses her in warmth. Aci’s death scene is intensely moving, the tone gradually ebbing to a fragile whisper. She sings the trilling avian aria ‘Qui l’augel da pianta in pianta’ with delightful aplomb. But should it sound as blithe as this? At a far slower tempo – a siciliano rather than a bouncy jig – Piau distils a bittersweet longing here, while Haïm makes that much more than Fabio Bonizzoni of Handel’s ravishing instrumental textures. Elsewhere the advantages are largely one-way. Polish mezzo Blandine Staskiewicz sings with clean, ‘straight’ tone but doesn’t begin to suggest Galatea’s sensuality. In vocal timbre and expressive engagement with the Italian text, Sara Mingardo is in in a different class. Ditto the two singers in the freakishly taxing role of Polifemo. Lisandro Abadie, a dryish baritone with add-on low notes, is competent but never sounds truly menacing, unlike the riper-toned Laurent Naouri for Haïm.

I’m glad to have heard Invernizzi in Aci’s music; and the playing of La Risonanza is lively and supple. But not even the charming bonus of a duet from Handel’s Roman cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno would sway me in favour of this new recording.