First performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in 1738, Handel’s opera Serse (Xerxes) was a flop. It received just five performances before closing, and it was not revived until 1924. All of which is hard to believe now.

Yet if its modern-day popularity rests largely on Serse’s famous opening aria Ombra mai fu, in which the Achaemenian king declares his passion for the plane tree that shades him, even here surprises await the listener who has not delved as closely into the history of the work as Handel scholar and author of this magnificent new recording’s booklet essay, David Vickers. For Handel based this aria, and some other parts of the opera, on an earlier...