The musical and theatrical extravagances of Handel’s first London opera, Rinaldo, had created a sensation early in 1711. Over a year later its successor, Il pastor fido, lying somewhere between a bucolic serenata and an opera seria, proved far less popular. Houses were reportedly sparse and the opera ran for just seven performances. One less than ecstatic eyewitness noted laconically: ‘The Scene represented only ye Country of Arcadia. Ye Habits were old – ye Opera Short.’

True, the plot of Il pastor fido, centring on the amorous tangles of assorted nymphs and shepherds, is thin (is there a more passive and gullible Arcadian shepherd than the ‘hero’, Mirtillo?), the orchestration modest, the time-scale, by Handelian opera standards, brief. But the delicacy and airy grace of the music, some of it – including Mirtillo’s drowsy musette aria ‘Caro Amor’ – lifted from Handel’s Italian works, is often captivating. While the lilting rhythms of minuet and jig are rarely absent for long, Arcadia can be a melancholic, even (in the machinations of Eurilla, thwarted in her love for Mirtillo) treacherous place. Several numbers mine a deeper vein of feeling, among them Dorinda’s anxious, halting sarabande ‘Mi lasci, mi fuggi’, Eurilla’s sensuous cavatina ‘Occhi belli’ (sung to the sleeping Mirtillo), Amarilli’s aria of mingled hurt and outrage at her imagined betrayal, and her tragic love duet with Mirtillo after she is condemned to death.

If Handel’s radical 1734 revision and expansion of Il pastor fido offers a richer musical experience, this premiere recording of the 1712 original is certainly welcome, if not quite ideal. The vast, swimmy acoustic of London’s Temple Church takes some getting used to. And, while David Bates lavishes evident care and affection on the score, his tempi in slower numbers occasionally verge on the indulgent. But in the main he directs his expert period band with spirit and imagination, while his singers all have pleasingly fresh, youthful voices.

Good as they are, countertenor Clint van der Linde as the macho huntsman Silvio and Katherine Manley as the malicious, ultimately penitent Eurilla could bring more verbal bite and tonal variety to their roles. Anna Dennis and the bell-toned Lucy Crowe sound more involved, shaping their coloratura flights elegantly and using ornamentation in the da capos to heighten the emotional expression. But the most theatrically gripping singing comes from mezzo Madeleine Shaw as Dorinda, above all in her haunting aria of masochistic devotion after she has been wounded by the idiotic Silvio’s arrow. Whatever my provisos, this set offers two hours and more of innocent, just occasionally not so innocent, Arcadian pleasures to anyone who loves Handel’s music.