Nicolò Jommelli is one of those figures who loomed large in the 18th century – in 1770 Charles Burney put him second in his list of favourite living Italian opera composers, behind Hasse but ahead of ‘Galuppi, Piccinni, Sacchini, etc’ – but is largely absent from the modern-day recording catalogues. Like many Neapolitan composers he played a significant role in creating the vocal style of early Classical opera, but 16 years in Stuttgart also lent his music a Germanic robust construction and richness of texture that were influential in the formulation of the European Classical style as a whole.

Some of his more than 80 operas have been recorded, but few of his chamber cantatas for soprano, strings and continuo. Not surprisingly, his operatic skills are on show in the form of expertly composed arias full of graceful and grateful vocal melody, as well as in flexible and dramatically developing accompanied recitatives – for instance the one in Perdono amata Nice, in which accelerating and uncontrollable darts of jealousy afflict a character seeing his beloved flirting, or the point in Giusti numi where recitative breaks briefly into arioso. The latter is one of two cantatas depicting the abandoned Queen Dido, but some listeners may feel that the subject demands something a little more emotionally wracked than the 18th-century poise Jommelli gives us here.

The Argentinian soprano Barbara Kusa has a light voice, technically comfortable and well matched in scale to the elegant-playing single strings. She does not display a great range of colour, however, and neither is she especially dramatic, with some of her recitative-singing one-paced and low on expressive enunciation of text. Mind you, it doesn’t help that the church acoustic has a distancing effect and rather hollows out the sound. A reasonably well done disc of interest to students of the 18th century, perhaps, but maybe not one to grab the general listener.