Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?

Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, and speeds were so portentously slow that you’d have to start the B Minor Mass shortly after lunch in order to make it home in time for bed.

Those dark days — caught between Baroque and a hard place — are over now.