‘Mitologia’ runs the title of the late Alan Curtis’s final Handel recording, a sequence of arias and duets on mythological themes that ranges over four decades, from the rare allegorical cantata Echeggiate, festeggiate, numi eterni to the music dramas Semele and Hercules. In the 18th century the less savoury characters of Classical mythology would typically receive a civilising makeover. So the maliciously disruptive gods are seen on their best, most emollient behaviour in the wedding serenata Parnasso in festa, while the bucanneering chancers Hercules and (in Arianna in Creta) Theseus become models of monogamy.

With five arias, Christiane Karg has the lion’s share of this attractively varied programme. As ever, the German soprano ‘lives’ each of the characters intensely: in the blanched, grief-etched tone she brings to Orfeo’s lament from Parnasso in festa, in Cupid’s seductive ‘Come, Zephyrs, come’, sung with just the right knowing coquettishness, or as Semele sarcastically insisting that Jupiter reveal himself in his true guise. In dialogue with the alluring (unnamed) oboist, Karg embodies the vernal innocence of Dafne’s ravishing ‘Felicissima quest’alma’ and uses the faint edge on her tone to advantage in Partenope’s vigorous defence of the unstable Arsace. Although her English is good, consonants (especially final consonants) could sometimes be clearer; and while she invariably ups the intensity in da capos, her elaborate embellishments can smother Handel’s original melodic lines.

Romina Basso, too, is not shy over ornamentation, going manically berserk in the da capo of Jupiter’s celebratory aria ‘Echeggiate, festeggiate’. Her firm, slightly androgynous mezzo and fiery temperament immediately impress in the tremendous ombra aria from Parnasso in festa (recyled from the oratorio Athalia). In the famous ‘mad scene’ from Hercules Basso does not hold back as the despairing, raving Dejanira, though her strongly accented English is only intermittently decipherable (which probably wouldn’t have worried the cosmopolitan Handel) and her lowest notes lack body. She and Karg make vivid, well-matched duet partners, whether in their euphoniously blended thirds and sixths in the Atalanta love duet, or the frisson of the duet in which Theseus seeks to reassure a distraught Ariadne of his constancy. If Curtis’s direction tends to be stronger on elegance than dramatic energy, he invariably draws neat, pointed playing from his expert period band.

Although all the numbers were recorded in the same venue, the balances are inconsistent. Basso sounds much more closely miked than Karg, while the over-prominence of pizzicato violins and boomy double bass compromises the Arcadian enchantment of ‘Felicissima quest’alma’. Minor irritants aside, this is an enjoyable, unclichéd programme, above all for Christiane Karg’s contribution, and a worthy memorial to a Baroque pioneer who revived so many forgotten operas by Handel, Vivaldi et al.