Metastasio’s drama about the Roman patriot Cato’s preference to commit suicide rather than submit to the dictator Julius Caesar was first set to music by Vinci (Rome, 1728), but soon afterwards the poet rewrote the final act; this revised version was set to music by Leo (Venice, 1728), although nine arias by other composers were used. Handel might have attended a performance of Leo’s opera while in Italy recruiting new singers, and in 1732 he used it as the basis of a pasticcio for the London stage. He carried over the overture and nine arias from Leo’s score but the rest of the arias were swapped for music by Hasse (six arias), Porpora (four), Vivaldi (at least two) and Vinci (one); it is unlikely Handel chose many (if any) of these substitutions – most were taken from the repertoire of the singers in his company (a few months later the same cast premiered Orlando). His limited creative involvement was the abridgement and adjustment of Leo’s recitatives.

The authorship of the arias is cited in Glossa’s booklet, which does not explain that Carlo Ipata’s performance makes heavy cuts to almost all recitatives, omits two arias from Act 2 and reshapes the opera into two halves (rather than three acts). This massacres the dramatic congruence of a plot already rendered threadbare by Handel: for example, the climactic confrontation in which Cato saves his enemy Cesare from ignoble assassination (a key part of Act 3) is bowdlerised; even the reporting of Cato’s suicide in the final scene is truncated.

Sonia Prina sings numerous Leo arias as the tragic hero Cato, whose intense bitterness at his daughter Marzia’s confession that she loves his enemy produces stirring dramatic music of the highest quality (‘Dovea svenarti all’ora’). Lucia Cirillo displays plenty of vocal skill and theatrical sureness as Marzia: ‘Confusa, smarrita spiegarti vorrei’ (Leo) vividly portrays Marzia’s torn loyalties between her lover and her father, and the opera concludes with her defiant heroism as she vows vengeance (‘Vo solcando un mar crudele’ from Vinci’s Artaserse). Riccardo Novaro’s Cesare is a dictator with plenty of swagger in his frustrated declaration of war to Cato (a parody of ‘Benché nasconda’ from Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso), but his roughshod singing in Porpora’s murmuring ‘È ver che all’amo intorno’ lacks the suave melodicism that the music cries out for. As the widow of Cesare’s vanquished rival Pompey, Roberta Invernizzi sings with her customary agility and sweet suppleness in arias by Porpora and Hasse (although decisions to sing final cadences up an octave are an unconvincing misstep). Kristina Hammarström’s pinpoint coloratura combines delightfully with Auser Musici’s responsive strings in Arbace’s ‘Vaghe luci, luci belle’ (unmistakably Vivaldi). The brutal minimisation of recitatives and the project’s origin as a concert at the Halle Festival hinder persuasive characterisations, and in such circumstances the recording is not a credible litmus test of whether the pasticcio might be an effective drama in its own right. Nevertheless, there is much here to enjoy thanks to Auser Musici’s accomplished playing and the talented cast of singers.