Rediscovery of the Baroque Spanish zarzuela has gained impetus in recent years. The name of José Melchor de Nebra Blasco (1702-68) is known particularly through his Viento es la dicha de amor (Auvidis Valois, 8/96), and his further output provides six of the items here. His early Amor aumenta el valor is to be performed in concert at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela this season, and from it Horacio’s aria ‘¡Ay, amor! ¡Ay, Clelia mia!’, sung here to riveting effect, and with glorious interplay between coloratura and flutes, makes the prospect an exciting one.

María Bayo has already recorded highly regarded collections of Mozart (Naïve, 6/97) and Handel (Naïve), and here she applies her beautifully clear, warm and intelligent coloratura to contemporaneous music from her own country. In her introductory notes she likens the emotional content of these basically Italian-style arias to that aroused by Handel, Gluck and Mozart, while at the same time highlighting the distinctive Spanish features. These are most obvious in Violante’s captivating seguidilla, ‘Inocentita y niña’, from another work available complete on CD – La madrileña by Vicente Martín y Soler, composer of the much cited (and, by Mozart, quoted) Una cosa rara.

The two items from Antonio Rodriguez de Hita’s La Briseida of 1768 represent another key work of the 18th-century zarzuela, composed to words by the distinguished poet Ramón de la Cruz. So, too, was Boccherini’s witty 1786 Clementina, from which the heroine’s cavatina ‘Almas que amor sujetó’ is another delight.

The fresh, crisp and invigorating playing of Les Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset contributes to a wonderfully enterprising, impeccably performed, and altogether magical statement of the delights of Baroque zarzuela.