Radamisto was Handel's first opera for the Royal Academy of Music, the company set up in 1719 under his musical directorship to put London opera on a secure basis (as optimistic a notion then as now). It had its premiere in the spring of 1720, with a cast including three British singers, as the costly Italians had not yet arrived; he revived it the following winter, with the new singers, in a heavily revised and substantially improved version, which provides the basis of the text used here. Senesino, the great alto castrato who created most of his heroic roles, made his Handelian debut in the name part, originally sung by a soprano, Durastanti, who now moved over to become the heroine, Zenobia; while the fine bass Boschi took on the part of the villainous Tiridate, previously assigned to a tenor (the Scot Alexander Gordon, chiefly remembered for his threat to jump on the harpsichord—encouraged by Handel: ''I will advertise it... more people will come to see you jump than to hear you sing'').
In modern times Radamisto has often been heard in Germany, but I believe only twice, both times by the lamented Handel Opera Society, in England. It is a tale of dynastic doings in post-classical Thrace, with King Tiridate of Armenia forsaking his wife Polissena because he becomes enamoured of Zenobia, Radamisto's queen; Radamisto and Zenobia go through various trials, but ''after various Accidents, it comes to pass, that he recovers both Her and his Kingdom''. It is easy enough to poke fun at plots such as these, but the score of Radamisto, one of Handel's richest, is its justification. Handel certainly knew how to 'wow' the London audiences on these big occasions. In the Second Act particularly, one arresting number follows another; Radamisto's ''Ombra cara'', which has been claimed (not without justice) as the finest aria Handel ever wrote, falls early in the act, and towards the end there is a wonderful sequence, chiefly of minor-key numbers, as the emotional tensions mount, culminating in a duet for the apparently doomed lovers. The Third Act, although dramatically less powerful, is also full of colourful and characterful music, including a noble quartet which Handel clearly remembered 30 years later when composing Jephtha (here Tiridate, there Jephtha, refuses three people's pleas for mercy, to similar music).
This performance is, I am sure, the best by far we have had from Nicholas McGegan. It begins a shade unpromisingly, with a light, rather hurried account of the overture, and sometimes in Act 1 I felt McGegan was underplaying the music—Tiridate's first aria is somehow energetic but not vigorous, Zenobia's diminished by too brisk a tempo and snatched notes from the strings. But once Act 2 begins, with a slow aria for Zenobia that foreshadows ''Ombra mai fu'' (Adagio, not Largo), we are on a new level of intensity, and McGegan clearly recognizes that and rises to it. There are a few perfunctory endings, in his usual flip way, and one or two places where violent emotion is too graphically represented (I am thinking especially of Radamisto's outburst, ''Vile! se mi dai vita'', in Act 3); but any Handelian will relish the constantly alert playing, the strong dramatic pacing and the weight given to the orchestral textures (Radamisto is unusually resourceful in its scoring). The result is as compelling as any Handel opera performance I have heard. McGegan seems to take the recitative a little slower than he generally does, which may be explained by the fact that this performance originated at the Gottingen Festival—by German standards in Handelian recitative this is decidedly on the speedy side.
He has the benefit of an excellent cast. The Senesino role is taken by a countertenor, Ralf Popken, very secure, clean and resonant in tone and sensitive in phrasing, just occasionally a little plummy-sounding as if the voice is produced too far back. The tessitura isn't quite ideal for a Senesino part: his voice lies higher and some of the low-lying passages don't quite get full value, but the top notes are superb (he goes up to G with evidently something to spare). ''Ombra cara'' is done with great feeling and the ornamentation in the da capo does, I think, enhance the expression. Juliana Gondek, with her full and ringing soprano, makes much of Zenobia's music, especially the passionate grief she is most called upon to express (the siciliano ''Fatemi, oh cieli, almen'', for example, and the 'mock-Largo', are movingly done; perhaps finest of all is her climactic aria in Act 3, with cello obbligato, which combines grief and furious outburst). I enjoyed too Lisa Saffer's Polissena, attractively light-toned but often dramatic and always musically sung, and the very fluent and spirited Tigrane of Dana Hanchard (originally for a soprano, then given to a castrato) is also a delight, with fioritura that is a model of clarity and precision. The two delightful arias left for Fraarte, a role reduced by Handel in the revisions, are happily done by Monika Frimmer. Both the lower voices, Nicolas Cavallier's warm Farasmane and Michael Dean's more vigorous Tiridate, are strong and secure and in fact, in the recording, seem a shade larger than life. The playing of the Freiburg orchestra is first-rate, though one might have wished for a rather larger body of strings.'