Ottone was one of Handel's most successful operas in his own time, and today it seems to have achieved the distinction of being the first to appear on rival period-style recordings. The present one was made earlier this year, hard on the heels of Harmonia Mundi's with Nicholas McGegan, after performances in Japan and in London. Robert King comes to it with plenty of experience in Handel but, I think, little in opera, and that is often evident in his direction. The performance is not strong in dramatic vitality; a number of times, events in this creaky plot demand a stronger, more firmly characterized reaction than he provides, and in particular there is no keen sense of when the music needs, because of the situation on stage, to be more energetically paced. The recitative mostly goes at quite a sensible speed, steady enough for the words to come across but never ponderous, though here too one sometimes wishes for more urgency. He also signally fails to use ornamentation to heighten the drama: indeed, he practically doesn't use it at all. A few of the singers add the odd flourish or piece of embellishment, but there is no consistency and none uses it expressively or to strengthen the impact of the words. Exaggerated, wild ornamentation (there is some of that on the McGegan set) is worse than none at all; but it misses the whole point of the da capo aria if one simply repeats the main section without doing anything to make it different from what has gone before.
There is not a lot to choose between the two versions as far as the cast is concerned. Claron McFadden, in the prima donna role of Teofane (the role sung by the famous Cuzzoni on her London debut), is, I think, something of a disappointment: too light and shallow-toned a voice, too girlish in sound, to bear the emotional weight of this music. She sings tastefully but not interestingly and never with much hint of passion, even in the lovely Act 1 siciliana, ''Affanni del pensier''. In James Bowman, who takes the primo uomo part originally composed for Senesino, King has an experienced Handelian and indeed an experienced opera singer, but the voice is neither as rich nor as even as it can be and the top is occasionally a little hooty. King spoils his big aria that brings down the Act 1 curtain (well, they didn't actually use curtains in Handel's time) by taking it too fast; it needs more weight than he allows, and Bowman is forced to snatch at the music. He is at his best here in the two great mournful arias at the opening of Act 3, the finest part of the opera.
The secondary roles fare better. Jennifer Smith brings plenty of life and a real sense of how to shape a Handelian line to the music of the villain of the piece, Gismonda; villain or no, Handel was obviously sympathetic to her love of her son as expressed in the beautiful aria near the beginning of Act 2, ''Vieni, o figlio!'', and her defiant G minor outburst in Act 3 goes splendidly too. Catherine Denley rises to the part of Matilda with some shapely and expressive singing; and Dominique Visse's even, controlled countertenor shines in Adelberto's music—he does the first aria in an appropriately languid style, the second with tremendous attack and vitality, though his Act 3 aria is vitiated by a want of rhythmic drive in the direction. Michael George too provides shapely and rhythmic singing and clarity of articulation in the bass part of Emireno.
Taken all round, the cast here is marginally preferable to McGegan's; the men are stronger, the women perhaps slightly weaker. Neither conductor seems to me fully idiomatic; McGegan is the more dramatic but his set is the more flawed by sins of commission than King's is by those of omission. The orchestra here is rather modest in size, much smaller than Handel himself used, but is overresonantly recorded in what sounds like a church acoustic.'