Handel: Acis and Galatea Jeni Bern (Galatea), Benjamin Hulett (Acis), NIMBUS NI 6201 This new HIP recording of Acis and Galatea (1829) is something of a guilty pleasure - and a sheer delight ! Handel conducted the original in the Great Hall in Christ Church in 1743, and the Mendelssohn score is in the Bodleian Library. Mendelssohn stamped his own identity onto the original after keyboard continuo had been generally abandoned, strengthening the strings and adding wind and brass. It is all achieved convincingly by these Oxford forces. Acis & Galatea is imprinted firmly on my musical memory since the 1960s, when my then small son sang the part of Damon in Eltham, leading to his being catapulted into fame by Joan Sutherland Recommended stongly as a window into opera in the mid-1800s. Peter Grahame Woolf |