This is an excellent successor to the album that Sandrine Piau recorded with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques 18 years ago (Naïve, 1/05), described by David Vickers in his review as the finest recital of Handel arias that he had ever heard. The title ‘Enchantresses’ is odd, though. Was Lucretia an enchantress? Or Cleopatra? The booklet note is headed ‘Handel’s Heroines’, which makes better sense.

In fact, there are only two who fit the bill: one is Alcina, whose aria ‘Ah, mio cor’ is at nearly 12 minutes by far the longest item. Sandrine Piau, normally associated with lighter roles, movingly expresses Alcina’s tormented love for Ruggiero, her agonised cries of ‘perché?’ – ‘why?’ – complemented by jabbing chords from the strings. The booklet note points to the cheerful ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ as showing another side to her character, but Handel only assigned the aria to Alcina 18 months after the premiere: it was conceived for her sister Morgana, as the printed text and Piau’s introduction make clear.

Another serious aria, ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’, finds the singer not darkening her tone but portraying Cleopatra’s sadness with a touching intensity. ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’, on the other hand, is a true contrast, sung with appealing vigour and only slightly spoilt by a mannered interruption to the momentum of the A section, both times round. (The cadenzas and da capo decorations tend to be overdone: Jérôme Correas, the conductor here, was also in part responsible for those on Piau’s earlier disc.) And there’s another metaphor aria about a boat struggling against the elements, ‘Scherza in mar la navicella’ from Lotario. Correas drives the strings and oboes forwards with uplifting crescendos, while Piau executes her semiquaver runs faultlessly. She is also breathtakingly good in the aria from Amadigi, where Melissa – who really is an enchantress – competes with a trumpet and an oboe, hard to tell apart and brilliantly played by Emmanuel Mure and Vincent Blanchard respectively.

Lucrezia is not an opera but a cantata from Handel’s early years in Italy. Piau weaves her way surely through the achingly chromatic writing, but the aria starts part way through a sentence: why the preceding recitative hasn’t been included is a puzzle. Better to turn to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who sings the whole cantata (Avie, 7/04). Les Paladins shine in the Overture to Amadigi and three movements from the Op 6 set of concertos. In the Larghetto of No 4, more careful planning would have avoided the solecism of leaving the cadence on the dominant hanging in mid-air: the chord of D major that opens the next track is a real jolt. Piau ends with the famous ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, sung by Almirena: again, no enchantress (that is to say, sorceress), but what enchantment in the singing!