By January 1753, after an unsuccessful operation to rescue his failing sight, the 68-year-old Handel’s world was plunged into utter darkness once and for all. Yet he was, with the help of his assistant and former pupil John Christopher Smith, still able to perform and compose – or at least rejig earlier material. Such is the case with his final oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth (1757), its roots being in Handel’s first oratorio Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, written to a libretto by his Roman patron Benedetto Pamphili in 1707, and its trunk and branches being the “London” version Trionfono del Tempo e della Verità (1737).

The new version now sported an English libretto, a translation of Pamphili’s text by one of Handel’s regular collaborators, the clergyman Thomas Morrel, and was enhanced by additional material from various sources. As Peter Smaill so neatly summarises in his booklet notes, “The text explores every device employed by Pleasure to beguile Beauty into a perpetual dependence on Youth, but ultimately the mirror of self-regard is dashed to the ground and Beauty accepts the divine order: change and decay.” Yes, that does sounds a little tedious. Thankfully, however, the music is...