Haendel : Aci, Galatea E Polifemo. Invernizzi, Staskiewicz, Abadie, Bonizzoni.

   in Early Music Today (Dec, 2013)
Handel composed his 1708 serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo for a royal wedding in Naples. Though less accomplished than Acis and Galatea, the popular masque he composed on the same pastoral myth a decade later, his youthful Aci can still charm. Its range of musical delights includes Aci’s poignant lament ‘Verso gia l’alma’ and Polifemo’s tenebrous ‘Fra l’ombre e gli orrori’, with its thrilling vocal plunge through two-and- a-half octaves. This disc serves as a coda to Fabio Bonizzoni’s excellent recordings of Handel’s Italian cantatas. Sadly, it is less a final flourish than a fitful anti-climax. Roberta Invernizzi, star of the cantata series, is a brilliantly expressive Aci, but …