Bartoli and cellist Sol Gabetta make for valiant duelling partners who converse, parry and riposte in spirited combat. Bartoli is velvet-toned, vivacious and voluptuous as ever. Her diction is sharp as a sabre; attack and intonation are spot on target. Add to that a gamut of vocal timbres, colours and an expressive quiver and you have an intoxicating mix. Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta has an equally flawless technique.

Bartoli is technically astonishing, rattling off coloratura with drill-like precision but wide-eyed joy and bags of personality. Gabetta’s cello is softer-grained (and occasionally a little backwardly placed), her playing nimble and responsive to Bartoli’s ornaments in a playful game of cat and mouse...Highly calorific Baroque fun.

The performances are shot through with the same sense of effervescent, quirky camaraderie that’s on show in the booklet-photos: the emphasis is squarely on the ‘dolce’ part of the title rather than the ‘duello’, so that the atmosphere is one of congenial, collaborative music-making as opposed to the one-upmanship that often played out when castrati were pitted against trumpets in the gladiatorial arena of the opera-house.

Gabetta’s light touch is the ideal foil for Bartoli’s expressive agility, whether the two of them are sparring in separate displays of virtuosity, weaving melancholy webs around each other, or hurtling along in parallel...everything gets supple support from the ensemble led by [Sol's] violinist brother.