Randall Scotting is the very model of a modern 21st-century countertenor. Media-savvy as well as tall, buffed and handsome, he has no problem showing off his dinner-plate pecs or indeed getting his kit off onstage. Issues of sexuality and gender are taken in his stride. (YouTube hosts a clip of him performing with New York’s Company XIV wearing high heels and stripping to Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man.) 

How different, yet how similar to the superstar castrato Senesino, who Scotting salutes in this fascinating disc. The subject of Scotting’s PhD thesis, Senesino courted fame and notoriety throughout his long career, most notably while associated with Handel’s operatic activities in London. Handel, however, is not to be heard here; Scotting presenting arias by seven little known composers who also wrote for Senesino.

Amongst the most impressive of these is Giovanni Antonio Giaj (1690-1764), whose Eumene provides Scotting with two dramatic opportunities to display his impressively even and agile instrument, with its warm, natural vibrato and particularly beguiling timbre in the lower range. Here, as indeed throughout the program, Scotting’s...