Atalanta was designed to celebrate the recent marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha and was first performed in an elaborate staged production including indoor fireworks on May 12, 1736. This 2005 live recording, made in Berkeley a few months after an affectionate staged production at the Göttingen Handel Festival, was previously available as a download via Magnatune but its eventual release on CD presents a charming Arcadian tale full of warm-hearted characterisations and wonderful music. The amiable Meleagro patiently seduces Atalanta, who initially disdains him because she loudly professes to prefer the thrill of hunting to the idea of love, but Handel’s extraordinary masterstroke early in Act 2 is the sudden plunge into a plangent soliloquy, ‘Lassa! ch’io t’ho perduta’, in which Atalanta laments that she is secretly plagued by self-doubt and passionate feelings for Meleagro; it is sung magnificently by Dominique Labelle, whose breathtaking qualities as an emotive and spontaneous stage performer of Handel have not been captured on disc enough. Susanne Rydén’s Meleagro has fluent musical intelligence, although unsteady quivering causes some worrying fragility in the fiendishly difficult portrait of unshakeable optimism in ‘Non saria poco’ (featuring one of Handel’s rare written top Cs) and the tenderly seductive ‘M’allontano sdegnose pupille’.

Handel also invests plenty of emotional depth in the shepherd Aminta (sung ardently by Michael Slattery), who is treated appallingly by his fickle lover Irene (much to her father Nicandro’s despair); after Aminta’s conflicting emotions are exposed in ‘Di ad Irene, tiranna, infedele’ (one of Handel’s finest tenor opera arias), he eventually defeats her games by turning the tables completely on her in the witty ‘Diedi il core’. Naturally, by this time Irene has shown her sensitive side in the lovely ‘Come alla tortorella’ (sung beautifully by Cécile van de Sant), in which graceful unison violins represent a dove cooing to its faithful mate. The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra excel at detailed sensitive accompaniment of singers, whether playful or sentimental, and Nicholas McGegan’s gently charismatic conducting lavishes obvious TLC upon one of Handel’s most light-hearted lesser-known gems. The performance is certainly more accomplished and captivating than the only other recording of Atalanta, also conducted by McGegan but with Hungarian forces in 1984.