Handel is one of Sandrine Piau's cult composers, and everyone has vivid memories of her magnificent Alcina on DVD (ALPHA715): 'Where once I portrayed light-hearted, pirouetting heroines, this new album offers a portrait of powerful, often wounded women.'... 'Queens, sorceresses, sirens... we were attracted by the musical and emotional intensity of the hopes, disappointments and sufferings of these women, not forgetting the malice or cruelty that they also know how to deploy', continues Jérôme Correas, the soprano's longstanding musical partner and conductor of Les Paladins. With Almirena, Cleopatra and Alcina, Handel explores all the facets of these defeated heroines, whose boldly delineated characters live once more in Sandrine Piau's passionate interpretation.