Following their excellent recordings of Salieri’s French operas of the 1780s, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques have turned to an early opera written for Vienna. Armida was premiered at the Burgtheater on June 2, 1771, when the composer was two months short of his 21st birthday. The story of the sorceress Armida and the paladin Rinaldo, taken from Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata, had been the subject of many operas, notably those by Lully and Handel. How bold of the young Salieri, I thought, to risk comparison with Gluck, whose protégé he was; but in fact Gluck’s Armide was composed a good six years later.

Actually the master’s fingerprints are all over this splendid score, starting with the Overture. Rinaldo has forgotten his duty as a crusader and willingly fallen into the clutches of the sorceress. Salieri follows one of the precepts in the preface to Alceste (published in 1769), where Gluck wrote that the overture ‘ought to apprise the spectators of the nature of the action’. There are echoes of Orfeo ed Euridice: almost comically so in Ubaldo’s ‘Ecco l’onda insidiosa’, where the oboe solo and accompanying twiddles are straight out of Orpheus’s ‘Che puro ciel’. Rinaldo’s ‘Vedo l’abisso orrendo’, with its B flat alto horns, recalls the bravura aria from Il Parnaso confuso that was to become ‘L’espoir renaît dans mon âme’ in Orphée et Eurydice.

Salieri used those high horns twice more in Armida, and indeed one of the features of the opera is the attractive scoring. The oboe at Ubaldo’s entrance is supported by flutes; it provides a serene conclusion to the Overture and a bucolic introduction to his discovery of Rinaldo; a little earlier, in appealingly full-toned phrasing by Olivier Rousset, it lulls Rinaldo to sleep, after which the strings alone play a gentle ballo. Trombones appear, unsurprisingly, with a chorus of demons. Notable also is the way one section will often follow another without a break. The pacing of recitative (both secco and accompagnato), aria, ensemble and chorus is quite admirable.

The first scene is set on the flowery bank of a lake in a park – a ‘parco delizioso’ – with the entrance to Armida’s palace visible in the distance. The first voice we hear after a chorus of young maidens belongs to Armida’s confidante. The near-contralto tones of Teresa Iervolino are just right for Ismene’s warning that Armida’s safety is threatened by the arrival of an unknown ship. The only male voice belongs to Ubaldo, the knight who has come to rescue Rinaldo. Ashley Riches, suitably martial when scattering the demons, ends the first act by vigorously commanding God to remove the blinkers from Rinaldo’s eyes.

The lovers don’t appear till Act 2. The joyous thirds with which they sing of their happiness turn to desperation and – on Rinaldo’s part – bafflement when Armida returns with the news about the strange ship. Lenneke Ruiten and Florie Valiquette blend perfectly. The latter makes a magnificent Rinaldo – originally a castrato part – with fluent coloratura in ‘Vedo l’abisso’. She is also perfectly good in the sleep scene; but on ‘The Salieri Album’ (Decca, 11/03) Cecilia Bartoli is even better, the passion and urgency at the start followed by an exquisite mezza voce. Ruiten, too, is no slouch in the coloratura of ‘Tremo, bell’idol mio’: tender there, she rages impressively when, abandoned at the end, Armida flies off on winged dragons. Her singing is brilliant, touching and unfailingly lovely.

The 20-strong Namur Chamber Choir, whether cavorting rustically or threatening demonically, provide excellent support. Their contribution to a subterranean scene, preceded by a solemn orchestral introduction from Les Talens Lyriques, bears an amusing resemblance to ‘We plough the fields, and scatter’. The richness and beauty of the playing, under the unerring direction of Christophe Rousset, is beyond praise. Excellent presentation, too, including costume designs and facsimile pages of the manuscript.