Handel’s early ‘Aci’ gets an intimate rendition

The wedding present he brought along — a two-act dramatic entertainment called “Aci, Galatea e Polifemo” — must have been the hit of the weekend, and it cast its spell anew on Sunday, May 21, in a tenderly intimate performance by Black Box Baroque.

Handel’s early Italian period, so often overlooked in favor of the mature masterpieces, suddenly seems to be having a little moment in the Bay Area.

Whatever the subject matter, Handel even at 23 could produce reams of inventive, beautiful and infinitely varied vocal music that illuminated any dramatic scenario he had to face.

In the case of “Aci,” we have two lovers — one a water nymph, the other a mortal — whose happiness is overshadowed by the relentless romantic attentions of the giant Polyphemus (whether this is the same cyclops who bedeviled Odysseus on his way home or a relative of the same name is unclear to me).

Handel subsequently returned to this story, giving it a more comic framing in the English oratorio “Acis and Galatea,” but this version — which ends with a watery love-death that Wagner would have recognized — plays for keeps.

The opening performance, staged by director Katie Nix in what seemed to be a large sitting room in the Christian Science Organization in Berkeley, put the audience just a few feet away from the three vocalists and the chamber orchestra, the Albany Consort, led by Jonathan Salzedo.

Hagenbuch herself shone most brightly as Aci, lavishing her bright and impeccably focused soprano on the role’s sinuous melodic lines and unleashing torrents of alarmingly precise figuration.