Recording of the Week, Hasse's Serpentes Ignei in Deserto from Thibault Noally and Les Accents

Johann Adolf Hasse may have had a point back in 1771 when he predicted that the teenage Mozart would eventually consign him and many of his contemporaries to the footnotes of musical history, but the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in the music of this elegant, imaginative composer. Armonia Atenea and Max Cencic served up a scintillating collection of his opera arias back in 2014, closely followed by an all-star recording of Siroe, re di Persia, and Hasse’s discography has been growing slowly but surely ever since.

Today the spotlight falls on the sacred drama Serpentes Ignei in Deserto (‘The Fiery Serpents in the Desert’), based on an episode from the Book of Numbers in which the Israelites flee Egypt under Moses’s leadership, but are struck down by a plague of venomous snakes after angering God with their doubts and complaints.

Composed shortly after Hasse had struck box-office gold with the operas Siroe and Artaserse in the early 1730s, the work was written not for the star castrati of the day but for the girls of the Ospedale degli Incurabli in Venice (who must have been formidably accomplished singers if the vocal writing is anything to go by). Sung in Latin, the piece is scored for six solo voices, strings and continuo, and is largely made up of recitatives and arias (with one radiant, cathartic duet for soprano and alto towards the end).

The work has been recorded just once before, with a predominantly female cast – with one outstanding exception, conductor Thibault Noally has opted for men here in order to showcase the vocal diversity of today’s crop of countertenors. His crack team boasts some of the finest Baroque singers on the block, with Philippe Jaroussky as Moses, Julia Lezhneva as the Angel, and Bruno de Sá, Carlo Vistoli, David Hansen and Jakub Józef Orliński as assorted Israelites making the arduous trek across the desert with varying degrees of equanimity.

They all cover themselves in glory, though you’ll need to suspend a certain amount of disbelief (and banish any mental images of Charlton Heston) in order to buy into the idea of Jaroussky as Moses: his sweet-toned, ethereal instrument does not lend itself naturally to reading the Riot Act, although there’s no doubting his agility when calling down thunderbolts and tempests in his opening aria. He’s at his considerable best, though, in the long-breathed prayer ‘Ara excelsa’, once everything’s blown over and Moses is left to meditate on a vision of Christ’s crucifixion.

The stand-out performances come courtesy of the two sopranos. As Josue (the gentlest and most faithful of the exhausted Israelites), Bruno de Sá provides some of the most luminously beautiful singing on the album, long lines flowing like the milk and honey which he describes so raptly in the optimistic ‘Spera, o cor’ – an oasis of calm amid the in-fighting and mighty thundering which surrounds him. Produced without mannerisms or awkward gear-shifts, his voice extends easily to a high C sharp and is entirely even throughout its wide range: even if you normally avoid male sopranos like an Old Testament plague, his aria is worth eight minutes of your time (as is that gorgeous eleventh-hour duet with Vistoli).

Julia Lezhneva once again delivers the bravura firepower which won her a record-contract with Decca in her early twenties (the near-superhuman speed at which she executes volleys of triplets in ‘Aura beata’ had my jaw somewhere near the floor), but what’s equally startling is the new level of dramatic conviction in her singing here: listen to the special colours she finds for the references to ‘sacred manna’ and to the brass serpent which will act as a talisman against its malignant corporeal counterparts.

The other three countertenors all bring distinctive timbres and temperaments to their one-hit roles: Hansen (who sits more or less in sopranist territory) is an assertive presence as the agitator Eliab, Vistoli brings full-voiced sweetness as the more docile Eleazar, and Orliński literally sings up a storm in Nathanael’s operatic ‘Furit grando procelloso’. The instrumental playing is equally characterful, with some astute continuo choices highlighting the striking imagery in the libretto. But the headline attractions are de Sá and Lezhneva – breathtaking stuff.