When it comes to Handel aria collections, it's the countertenors and sopranos that get all the recording time. The entirely beneficial trend of organizing these recordings by the people who sang the music in Handel's time may touch on a tenor here for the first time, and the effect is different from the various albums devoted to the soprano and countertenor repertoire. The tenor John Beard was not a flashy Italian import, but a native Englander, and he had a long career with Handel. He might, the detailed booklet observes, ...
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When it comes to Handel aria collections, it's the countertenors and sopranos that get all the recording time. The entirely beneficial trend of organizing these recordings by the people who sang the music in Handel's time may touch on a tenor here for the first time, and the effect is different from the various albums devoted to the soprano and countertenor repertoire. The tenor John Beard was not a flashy Italian import, but a native Englander, and he had a long career with Handel. He might, the detailed booklet observes, have sung Handel's anthems as a 12-year-old at the coronation of George II in 1727. One imagines that while Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni were making headlines by duking it out on-stage, connoisseurs preferred a quieter appreciation of Beard. There are several attractive features here, starting with the voice of tenor Allan Clayton: it seems suited to languid pastoral melodies, but explodes quite unexpectedly with power in the heroic ones. You get several chunks of music...
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