Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Listen to the new album: aam.co.uk/product/john-weldon-the-judgment-of-paris

"Perkins’s performance with AAM and the Cambridge Handel Opera Company is in all ways a winner — an exceptional (and exceptionally well-recorded) performance worthy of a listen. Wonderfully, the physical CD of this short, 75-minute work is packaged with an informative 70-page booklet." – Early Music America

Movement No. 32: Symphony for Venus

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Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) and Cambridge Handel Opera Company (CHOC) follow their Gramophone-nominated recording of Eccles’ Semele with a world-premiere recording of John Weldon’s masque The Judgment of Paris.

In 1700 the Earl of Halifax decided England needed all-sung opera. He offered a ‘Musick Prize’ of 100 guineas for the best setting of the libretto of The Judgement of Paris by William Congreve, with entries by composers like John Eccles and Daniel Purcell. Weldon’s setting, which won the competition but was never published, is recorded here for the first time.

Released as a hardback mediabook, the CD is accompanied by a host of fascinating essays written specially by historians, musicologists and other experts – finally giving this winning masque the attention it deserves.

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Academy of Ancient Music
Cambridge Handel Opera Company
Julian Perkins, director
Thomas Walker | Jonathan Brown | Helen Charlston | Kitty Whately | Anna Dennis | Anna Cavaliero | Aksel Rykkvin