Emblazoned on the title page of many an 18th-century Italian opera libretto, “dramma per musica” soon became the name for the operas composed to those...

Emblazoned on the title page of many an 18th-century Italian opera libretto, “dramma per musica” soon became the name for the operas composed to those words. The name perfectly evokes the fury of passions which the masterpieces of the period captured with such power.

This collection of astonishing discoveries – many of them heard here in world-premiere recordings – brings together some of the most magnificent arias of the genre. All of them place such huge demands on the singer’s abilities that only the world’s most legendary castratos such as Farinelli and Caffarelli were considered able to do them justice.