American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo joins LNM for a snapshot of the operatic hits of the Royal Academy of Music - founded in 1719 as the first opera company in the English-speaking world - drawing on Handel, Ariosti and Bononcini circa 1725.

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The three composers of the album's title were, in the eighteenth-century historian Charles Burney's phrase, a "renowned triumvirate" brought together to spearhead the Academy's ambitions at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. Handel was hired first, as music director, and used the position to recruit major singers from the continent, including the celebrated Italian castrato Senesino, who anchored the company from 1720 until 1728. Bononcini and Ariosti were engaged alongside him, and rumours of rivalry between the three composers persist to this day, even if the full extent of it remains unclear. All three, in any case, wrote with Senesino's voice in mind, and it is that shared inspiration that gives the album its coherence despite drawing on three different musical personalities.

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The programme ranges across the Academy's decade of activity between 1721 and 1727, drawing Handel's contributions from some of his less familiar operas of the period — Flavio, Admeto and Ottone — alongside a setting of "Va tacito" from Giulio Cesare, given here with a brusque bass line and an extended cadenza for countertenor and horn. Ariosti is represented by excerpts from Vespasiano, Il naufragio vicino and Coriolano, including the aria "Voi d'un figlio," and Bononcini by selections from Crispo, Griselda and Muzio Scevola, among them "Così stanco pellegrino" and "Per la gloria d'adorarvi." It was Zazzo's first solo disc recorded with orchestra, released on Harmonia Mundi USA in 2014.

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The recording drew strong reviews on release. Planet Hugill gave it five stars, praising the imaginative choice of repertoire and the strength of the performances, and BBC Music Magazine's review, by Anna Picard, singled out the bold dynamic shaping and articulation Bates draws from La Nuova Musica, alongside the character Zazzo brings to each aria. The Guardian, reviewing a related concert performance, called the pairing of Bates and Zazzo one made in "Handel heaven." The album went on to earn a Gramophone Editor's Choice, one of two Harmonia Mundi-era awards in LNM's discography alongside Sacrifices' Le Choix de France Musique.

For Zazzo, the disc capped a wide-ranging career already built on major Handel roles — including recordings of Rinaldo, Messiah, Griselda and Saul — and reflected an interpretive approach that favours lyricism over sheer vocal heft, a choice that reviewers have noted gives his singing an unusually light, almost treble-like quality at the top of the range.