The name of Giovanni Carestini will mean nothing to most opera lovers; but in his day he was the equal of his more familiar contemporaries, Senesino and Farinelli. As a boy he was taken up by the Cusani family, hence the nickname “Il Cusanino”. In the 1720s he was to be seen onstage in Milan, Venice and Parma; Vinci composed for him in Rome, likewise Hasse in Naples. In 1733 he joined Handel’s company in London, after Senesino had defected to the Opera of the Nobility. Much later, he spent two years in St Petersburg.

Carestini sang soprano roles, later moving down to alto. Philippe Jaroussky is billed as a countertenor but he has the range and timbre of a soprano. Though not of course a castrato, he makes a good substitute. He starts with an aria by Porpora, teacher of Farinelli and, briefly, Hasse: punctuated by trumpet fanfares, “Tu che d’ardir” shows off Jaroussky’s brilliance in semiquaver runs. Even better is the Capelli, where one of the eponymous brothers laments his lot in long, slow phrases that Jaroussky articulates quite ravishingly.

Another slow number, with a faster middle section, is “Se mai senti” by the grossly neglected Hasse. Carestini’s Handelian roles are well represented by four arias but what a pity that room wasn’t found for “Verdi prati”, the aria in Alcina that Carestini at first refused to sing, thereby incurring Handel’s formidable wrath.

The booklet has full texts and translations; but the spirits that Graun’s Orpheus was fleeing were Stygian – not Scythian!