Alessandro Scarlatti significantly increased the focus on individual characters in opera, allotting more time to the expression of their feelings and giving the orchestra a bigger role in conjuring mood and atmosphere. As such, he is a key figure in the development of modern opera. Born in Sicily in 1660, he spent much of his career in Naples, then an epicentre of Italian musical activity. Scarlatti was feverishly productive. More than 100 operas flowed from his pen over four decades, many showing significant innovation. Set-piece arias such as “Figlio! Tiranno! O Dio!” from Griselda (1721) fizzed with a concentrated emotional energy, enhancing the visceral charge that opera was capable of creating. And the unsettled harmonies of “Cara tomba del mio diletto” from Il Mitridate Eupatore (1707) plumbed the deep psychology of a character in ways that Handel would later develop further. Scarlatti died in 1725, and posterity has tended to rate his sonata-writing son Domenico more highly. But Alessandro’s need to please the string of aristocratic patrons he worked for in Naples, Rome and Florence meant that he too was constantly pushing the boundaries in his operatic writing. Exciting albums by artists such as soprano Elizabeth Watts, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and conductor René Jacobs make this abundantly obvious.