With most items familiar from previous Handel aria anthologies, on paper this looks full of tired clichés. Thankfully, the stirring and passionate execution of Handel’s music is anything but dull routine. Kozená and her Venetian accomplices might not be giving us anything deeply perceptive but everybody involved sounds as if they are engaged with the music. In particular, the Venice Baroque Orchestra sound admirably absorbed in the dramatic world of each aria.

Kozená has a good stab at this, too, but does not quite capture the personality and situation of each character. Alcina’s heartbroken first encounter of a man being beyond her seductive power in “Ah! mio cor!” is ravishing but its slowly creeping pathos is not a natural opener for a disc like this, and Kozená – albeit passionate – does not capture the depth of Alcina’s complex psychological condition. An extrovert “Cara speme” does not quite fit Sesto’s emotional self-inquiry.

Kozená is much better at conveying the scheming Agrippina’s anxious plea to the gods and “Scherza infida” is finely judged, its best passages not too far off the benchmark set by Janet Baker, Sarah Connolly and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (alas, it is let down by the staccato B section). The most convincing synthesis of musical outpouring and dramatic mood is Melissa’s “Desterò dall’empia dite” (from Amadigi).

In Dejanira’s mad scene from Hercules, Kozená’s affected vowels and hammed-up insanity rob it of the poignancy that understatement achieves much better; Dejanira is a distraught heroine, not a lunatic shrieking that the Martians have landed. A similar approach makes for an over-egged mad scene from Orlando (is Orlando a binge-drinking chav in the Big Brother house?). But despite the frequent limitation of one-dimensional characterisation, these appealing performances have strength and colour.