The Baroque specialist Ottavio Dantone regales Ravenna with three Handelian masterpieces. The operas Orlando and Alcina—both spinoffs from cockamamie Renaissance epics of the Crusades, richly populated with amorous knights errant, damsels in distress, and wizards of both sexes—are seen in stagings by the name-brand Italian director-designer Pier Luigi Pizzi, still in the game at 95. Don’t expect to recognize the names of Dantone’s soloists, but as his extensive discography has proved dozens of times over, the talent pool he draws on is bottomless. His crackerjack period ensemble goes by the name Accademia Bizantina, which prompts us to note that tiny Ravenna was the capital of the fifth-century West Roman Empire, and that its wealth of Byzantine-style mosaics rivals that of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul itself. Mosaics by day, Handel by night—it sounds like heaven. —Matthew Gurewitsch