Between 1706 and 1710, a young George Frideric Handel undertook an extended journey through Italy that would prove transformative. Immersed in the most sophisticated musical culture of his age, he composed prolifically a wealth of secular cantatas that rank among the most intimate and emotionally penetrating works of his entire career. An Italian Portrait brings together five of these cantatas in what is probably their first complete recording with countertenor. Heard through the prism of the male voice, these pages take on a new luminosity, the poetry of unrequited love and inner conflict coloured with a timbre as distinctive as the works themselves are remarkable. Countertenor Gabriel Díaz is joined by harpsichordist Alfonso Sebastián and baroque cellist Fernando Santiago in a performance recorded in the resonant splendour of the Iglesia de San Miguel de Daroca, Zaragoza.