Max Emanuel Cencic follows up last year’s disc of arias from the operas of Johann Adolf Hasse by taking the title role in the first ever complete recording of one of Hasse’s most showy scores – the latest addition to the handful of Hasse’s 70 or so stage works currently available on disc. This is the 1763 version of Siroe, a substantial reworking for Dresden of the opera first performed in the Bologna 30 years earlier. The revision was designed to be a dazzling vocal showcase, and though the recitative has been substantially cut for the recording, all 21 of the hugely demanding arias are included. Led by Cencic and fellow countertenor Franco Fagioli, with George Petrou conducting, the cast seems unfazed by the technical challenges, though there’s rather more bravura than refinement. The singing can sometimes be uncomfortably coarse, but as Siroe’s lover Laodice, the soprano Julia Lezhneva shows that it is possible to negotiate Hasse’s vocal writing with stylishness and beauty of tone as well as accuracy.
