He very usefully for the rest of us included YouTube renditions, including the one with Peter Pears singing Michelangelo's sonnets. The homoerotic content of which, Bostridge muses, might have gone over the original audience's head, due to the lyrics being in Italian.

Quite possibly true, but My beloved is mine (1947) has equally homoerotic lyrics when sung by a man, and is in English. Apparently it still went over the audience's head...