Stradella’s serenata La Circe was commissioned by Princess Olimpia Aldobrandini, a Florentine whose deceased Roman husbands had been members of powerful Borghese and Pamphilij families. The occasion was a lavish party at her villa in the Frascati hills on May 16, 1668, that celebrated Leopoldo de’ Medici becoming a cardinal. On these grounds alone, the serenata marks a fascinating intersection of aristocratic patronage of the arts in Baroque Rome.

The poet Giovan Filippo Apolloni’s panegyric is set at a beautiful fountain on the leafy slopes of Parnassus: the ghost of the sorceress Circe emerges from the Elysian Fields, reminds us that she is Apollo’s daughter and informs us she is searching for the tomb of her son Telegonus but has become distracted by a bright light; the Frascati river god Algido explains that this light is the presence of a Medici. Circe proceeds to have a conversation with an echoing Zephyr, and all three singers go on to offer praises of the new cardinal; eyewitnesses at the party reported that at this point each of the singers presented expensive gifts to the prestigious Medici guest.

No doubt such visual spectacle is difficult to recover in a drabber modern concert setting but harpsichordist Luca Guglielmi, his chamber ensemble Concerto Madrigalesco (two violins and bass viol) and three stylistically adroit singers convey the charm and skilfulness of Stradella’s music in this live recording made in Geneva in 2008; Marco Scavazza’s suave baritone is particularly pleasing and many of the little arias for soprano voices with flourishes for the violins seem to foreshadow Alessandro Scarlatti. The obtuse poetry and the reverberant acoustic’s impact on the soprano voices prevent this from being an ideal introduction to the most talented Italian composer of his generation, but for those already converted this rarity is an intriguing pleasure.