Love, jealousy, tragedy and transfiguration — Acis & Galatea has it all. So it is no surprise that Handel’s ‘little opera’, as he called it, was his most popular stage work during his lifetime. It was his first major setting of a substantial English text and would become the prototype for the English oratorio, which earned Handel such fame in the latter part of his career. Performed by Dunedin Consort in the original ‘Cannons’ version with one-per-part choruses — which Gramophone called ‘utterly magical’ — Handel’s glorious music gleams anew.