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When a classical superstar manages to land a big record deal these days, it’s a major—and rare—event, and, as rock bands have done for decades, he or she often goes on the road.

Take Cecilia Bartoli, who sold out Carnegie Hall last week with a concert that more or less duplicated her new Decca recital disc, Opera Proibita (“Forbidden Opera”).

Shonagh rae biography of christopher

If the whole project sounds as if it were marketed by P. T. Barnum himself, so be it. Bartoli is a mezzo worth hyping, and the recording is quite accurately advertised. All the composers on the disc—Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Antonio Caldara—were active in Rome years ago, when the prudish Pope Clement XI placed a ban on public opera performance, causing composers to turn to oratorios and private patronage.

Most of those scores, even those by Handel, are seldom performed, so Bartoli did us a favor.

And exciting discoveries they turn out to be, thrilling operatic arias in all but name: virtuosic, melodically ravishing, full of subt