Handel Arias

Handel was around before the tenor voice was used for the romantic lead, said Rupert Christiansen in the Daily Telegraph, so "most of the music he wrote for this vocal range represents old men or cackling villains".

The Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon has transposed arias that were meant for the higher-voiced mezzo-soprano castrato down to his own range, to skirt this problem. "The result will have purists retching - Villazon's rich tone and forthright heart-on-sleeve style are scarcely what we expect in Baroque singing, and his execution of coloratura runs is idiosyncratic, to say the least."

But he sings with "such dramatic intensity and verbal clarity that these performances are tremendously alive and involving".

Villazon is not the most stylistically correct of Handelians, said Andrew Clark in the FT. But the best of these arias – such as Ombra mai fu and Scherza infida – make for "compulsive listening". ·