Haendel : Duetti Da Camera. Invernizzi, De Liso, Bonizzoni.

   in Early Music Today (Jun, 2014)
Handel’s chamber duets are utterly different from the duets he composed for his operas and oratorios. Intended as private entertainment for aristocratic connoisseurs, the duetti da camera are a separate category of work, in which the voices are treated instrumentally rather than dramatically: the two singers sing the same text in long, melodic phrases that flow round each other in graceful counterpoint, accompanied only by continuo. The result is a compositional form akin more to the trio sonata than to the operatic duet.

Handel composed 20 or so chamber duets for various vocal pairings between the mid-1700s and the mid-1740s; this Glossa disc has all ten of his duetti for soprano …