Here’s a surprise, and an enjoyable one: a version of Messiah in Italian translation that came to light as recently as 2019. The man responsible was the third Earl Cowper, a rich, well-connected young nobleman who went on the Grand Tour and instead of returning decided to settle in Florence, where he became a well-known member of Society. He introduced the music of Handel to Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany (later the Emperor Leopold II, whose coronation as King of Bohemia was to be celebrated by the commissioning of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito); and it was at Leopold’s behest that Il Messia was performed at the Pitti Palace on August 6, 1768, the first time it was heard on the Continent.

Cowper engaged a local priest and man of letters, Antonio Pillori, to make the translation; the musical adaptation was in the hands of a composer and singer, Salvatore Pazzaglia. The piece was heavily cut: Handel’s music remained largely unaltered but Pillori transmuted much of the English prose into Italian verse. There are many surprises along the way. Part 1 ends with the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, almost all of Part 3 is omitted, and the solo tenor is heard only in the florid passages of ‘For unto us’, his numbers being assigned to the soprano.

The Grave opening to the Overture – no Baroque double-dotting here! – is overlaid by arabesques on the solo violin: a mistake, I feel, right at the start of the work, and some of the subsequent vocal cadenzas are also over-elaborate. In her informative booklet note, Juliane Riepe writes that ‘up-beats were replaced or eliminated’; but here is one that was added (and there are more later), ‘Comfort ye’ becoming ‘Confortati’. Eleonora Bellocci’s bright ‘Ev’ry valley’ leads into a cheerful, speedy ‘And the glory of the Lord’. Then we cut to ‘For behold’ and ‘The people that walked in darkness’, the words of the latter changed into an operatic metaphor aria. Both are delivered by Luigi De Donato with firm, dark, tone.

‘For unto us’ starts with the soloists, the chorus held back until ‘And the government’, a very effective touch. ‘He shall feed his flock’ is given to the soprano: though the instrument doesn’t appear in the list of players, I thought I detected the sound of a clarinet. In Part 2, the contralto gets her due with ‘He was despised’, Margherita Maria Sala as forthright in the outer sections as in ‘He gave his back’. Violent, jagged strings introduce ‘All they that see him’. Bellocci could be more intense at ‘Thy rebuke’, and there’s an awkward organ link from the E minor of ‘Behold and see’ to the F major of ‘Lift up your heads’. De Donato is impressively agile in ‘Why do the nations’, turned into the da capo aria you expect it to be at first hearing, without the shock – a real coup de théâtre on Handel’s part – of its being interrupted by ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’. There’s another surprise when ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’ leads not into ‘The trumpet shall sound’ but ‘Worthy is the Lamb’, resoundingly sung and played.

All this detail about changes and cuts is meant to be informative, not critical. Alessandro De Marchi conducts a bright, lively performance. Someone forgot about the Piva (the ‘Pastoral Symphony’), so the track numbering in the booklet is awry after No 7. You wouldn’t know that an audience was present until the final applause. As a quirky variant of a much-loved piece, this is well worth a listen.