Attilio Ariosti was a particularly versatile Italian composer, musician and poet, known throughout Europe. As an operatic composer his name was joined in London by those of Handel and Bononcini, and his Cariolano of 1723 and Vespasiano of 1724 were much acclaimed. The cycle of Six Cantatas ‘The Flowering and Fading of Love’, only recently discovered and here receiving its first recording, forms a sonnet sequence about the journey of love, ranging from La Rosa (The Rose) to Il Naufragio (The Shipwreck) and the final La Gelosia (Jealousy).