This is a truly revelatory issue. For most early music enthusiasts Benedetto Ferrari (1603/4-1681) is known only as the likely composer of Pur ti miro, the sublimely sensual duet that ends Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Not surprisingly a ravishing performance by Invernizzi and Elena Cecchi Fedi turns up here among the fill-ups, but the real discovery is the oratorio Il Sansone. Composed for the Este court at Modena, where Ferrari worked intermittently at various stages of his life, it dates from 1680. By that time Ferrari was deemed a thoroughly old-fashioned composer who as such had difficulty in keeping his post. That, of course, need bother nobody today, particularly since the result is a highly dramatic work in Monteverdian style which shows absolutely no sign of weariness or old age.
The greatest single strength of Il Sansone is the vivid characterisation of not only the principal protagonists, but also the allegorical characters of Reason and Passion, who clearly emerge as the conscience of Samson in the battle for the Israelite hero. Ferrari's Delilah, every inch the dangerous, scheming beauty of Biblical fame, here finds a superb interpreter in Invernizzi, her creamily-sung wiles inexorably overcoming Lepore's noble, flawed hero, his dignity never greater than in his intensely moving final aria. Fagotto is a splendidly communicative Testo, a role that in addition to narration includes comment in the manner of a Greek chorus and even an aria. Curtis' direction is totally idiomatic, drawing from his singers and small instrumental group a performance of acute perception, one fully worthy of a marvellous discovery that demands a place in every Baroque collection. BRIAN ROBINS