You can always rely on the veteran Italian baritone Sergio Foresti for interesting Baroque repertoire. And following hot on the heels of recordings of music by Heinichen, Bononcini, Lotti and Caldara comes this attractive collection of solo cantatas by Benedetto Marcello.

A pupil of both Lotti and Gasparini, Marcello is perhaps best remembered today as a no-holds-barred commentator (or ‘vigilant critical spirit’, as the booklet notes rather euphemistically have it) on Venetian opera and its abuses. But the compromises and vulgarities of staging could be avoided in the controlled elegance and intimacy of the chamber cantata, and it was into this genre that Marcello poured his own energies. Over 300 cantatas survive, later admired by no less than Rossini, Bizet and Chopin, of which Foresti here showcases a glossy handful.

These – as the recording’s title suggests – are all love-themed. Marcello’s lovers (as so they are; many of the texts are likely his work too) are not a happy bunch. Distance, disdain, jealousy, deceit, even death all conspire to separate them from their beloveds, and they pour out their emotions in the full musical gamut of shades from despair to rage and tenderness.

Surviving in versions for multiple voice-types, Quanta pietà mi fate, o mesti fiori! (‘How much pity I feel for you, oh sad flowers!’) is the standout here. A pastoral conceit sees the lover mourning the ephemeral existence of flowers, before (inevitably) comparing their loss of the dawn light to his own sorrow at the absence of his beloved. Foresti shrinks his large instrument down to a crooning wisp of legato for the lovely ‘Privo allor delle ruggiade’ (‘Devoid of dew’), before opening out for the broader grief of ‘Piangete al pianto mio’ (‘Weep for my weeping’), Simone Vallerotonda’s archlute supplying the glints of light that illuminate the low-lying darkness.

The opening cantata Udite, amanti (‘Hear, lovers’) brings Agnieszka Oszanca’s cello to the fore – confidant, mirror and, in the briskly dismissive articulation and unexpected grit of ‘Si disciolga quell’empia catena’ (‘May this cruel chain break’), cheerleader. Verdi urged his students to study Marcello’s recitatives, and you can hear why in the opening of Poiché fato inumano (‘Since the inhumane fate’), with its harmonic hairpins and blind alleys.

Foresti’s intensity of delivery is well suited to these passionate characters. A tendency to approach notes from underneath and settle up, and some rather approximate English translations are the only small issues with an otherwise appealing collection.