Handel’s Ariodante takes up episodes from Ariosto’s dizzying and very, very long Renaissance epic Orlando Furioso. Composed for the opening of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, it received 11 performances in 1735, which was a lot, and had a revival the following year. Then, centuries of nothing. With a revival headed by Janet Baker in 1964, the opera took its place as one of Handel’s most cherished operas. And the heart of the heart of the score is the aria “Scherza infida,” the hero’s exquisitely accompanied, purling yet heartbreaking lament at the sight of his lover admitting another man to her bedchamber. (He’s wrong about what’s happening, but his feelings are his feelings.) Recordings of the moonlit solo clock in anywhere between eight and twelve minutes—quite a spread. Whatever tempo the resplendent mezzo-soprano Emily d’Angelo and the conductor Harry Bicket agree on for this new Robert Carsen production on the heavenly stage of the Opéra Garnier, they are sure to make time stand still. —Matthew Gurewitsch