Alessandro Scarlatti’s cantata Bella madre de’ fiori, opens with a slow-tempo Sinfonia followed by a series of arias and recitatives, the last of which is perhaps the most intensely poetic and stylistically original section of the whole cantata. Giovanni Bononcini’s Il lamento di Olimpia opens with a two-movement delicately pastoral prelude; the most important dramatic moments of the text are in the two recitatives rather than in the cantata’s da capo arias. For the cantata Care luci del mio bene, Bononcini has given us a composition of exquisite elegance in superb cantabile style.