Within individual numbers the performances can be thrilling...the band nimbly negotiates the huge range of effects demanded by this composite score...Franziska Gottwald is spellbinding in Vivaldi's 'Mentre dormi', combining tenderness, warm timbres and awesome pianissimos. Sprightly and silver-toned, Ruth Rosique tosses off Tommaso Traetta's fioritura with courtly ease.

if you treat the discs as a succession of concert arias there is much to enjoy here...the Venice Baroque Orchestra play with their trademark zest and colour...If the soloists can be word-shy, all sing with skill and stylistic understanding...Romina Basso impresses with her fiery temperament and scintillating coloratura...Nicholas Phan fields a compact, mellifluous tenor...The palm, though, goes to Karina Gauvin's Argene

Vivaldi's sole contribution, 'Mentre dormi', stands head and shoulders above the rest...The playing of the Venice Baroque Orcehstra under Chryssicos is extremely fine, full-blooded and alert string-playing with characterful wind contributions. This is a useful exploration of the compositional history of L'Olimpiade in attractive performances and I hope that complete versions by some of these composers are forthcoming once the Olympic frenzy is over.

The finished article is a pleasing hotchpotch of high baroque, Rococo and early-Classical styles, and whilst the arias aren’t arranged chronologically I didn’t feel that any of the stylistic transitions were jarring...Romina Basso’s robust, flexible mezzo is made for this repertoire..[Gottwald's] pleasantly brittle timbre reminded me of the young Magdalena Kozena.

The plot concerns the usual opera seria conflicts of loyalty, love and power, all set off by a deception. It amounts to a sequence of seemingly disconnected arias, but there’s not a dud among them.

Sung and played with freshness and spirit by the Venice Baroque and six youthful soloists, this disc – full of showpiece da capo arias and gleeful coloratura – may up your game on the obscure opera front.

There are no obvious duds, though the best items do come from the few composers whose names are still remembered – a glorious Cherubini aria sung by Romina Basso’s Megacle in Act II and Cimarosa’s Non sò donde viene at the close of Act III...Comprehensively annotated, very well recorded and beautifully played