“Handel in the Playhouse” endeavours to reveal how the composer’s music was popularised through arrangements performed in English ballad operas. L’Avventura London consists of violin, recorder, oboe, cello and harpsichord, with ak Ozmo directing from the archlute (and occasionally guitar). Ballad opera performances can sometimes be zesty but unsubtle, yet L’Avventura show excellent musicianship in the spirited March from Rinaldo that was used in the Beggar’s Opera. I’m less keen on how Handel’s gorgeous “Son confusa pastorella” (Poro) was butchered into the duet “Some Confounded Planet Reigning” for Henry Fielding’s The Lottery; there is nothing wrong with the robust and forthright singing of Mary Bevan and Greg Tassell but it is hard to avoid concluding that sometimes pure and unaltered Handel is impossible to beat. Most of the music better fits its unauthorised ballad opera format, and some notably more convincing adaptations were taken from Handel’s little-known English songs: “The Little Wanton God” is a parody text for “Strephon’s Complaint of Love”, and is performed with delicate pizzicato cello bass, poetic violin-playing, and is sung emotionally by Bevan. Among the more intriguing songs are those adapted from instrumental works, such as numbers from John Gay’s Polly (the ill-fated sequel to The Beggar’s Opera) based on a march from Scipione and a minuet in the Water Music. “In Vain, in Vain, I Rove” is an entertaining adaptation of “Ho un non so che nel cor”, although the booklet note isn’t quite correct to ascribe this aria to La Resurrezione: Londoners would have not known Handel’s Roman oratorio but would have heard this aria in Il pastor fido.

Thorough booklet documentation from Ozmo and Berta Joncus is helpful up to a point, although there are some misleading statements. For example, the exaggerated claim that the appropriation of Handel’s music into English ballad operas during the 1730s played a “key…role in turning Handel into a ‘British’ composer” arouses scepticism; nothing was more responsible for “naturalising” Handel than the composer himself in 1727. Nevertheless, Ozmo has researched and worked incredibly hard on this labour of love, and his insightful commentary on the music and performance practice chosen for this programme contains some fascinating facsimiles of historical sources.