Richly scored and tightly plotted, an all-star cast brings to life one of Handel’s finest operas, Ariodante.

Following her stunning appearance in Alcina in 2014, the latest instalment in our Handel opera series sees the return of Joyce DiDonato in the title role. Marking 500 years since the publication of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, a tale of knights and entangled love, Ariodante stands as Handel’s final opera on the subject after Alcina and Orlando.

“If there is a more supportive Handelian conductor than Bicket, he or she is in hiding. The English Concert played with the vivacity and discipline of a continental ensemble, secured by Joseph Crouch’s expressive and attentive continuo cello, decorated variously with oboes, natural horns and dulcet treble recorders, and perfumed with the heathery tone of a mournful bassoon in Scherza infida” – The Times