Imagine Trump, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen & Alexander the Great went into a room: Handel's Tamerlano reinvented at London Handel Festival

Handel: Tamerlano - James Laing - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Handel: Tamerlano: James Laing, Benjamin Hulett, Nardus Williams, Jake Ingbar, Kitty Whately, director: Orpha Phelan, Academy of Ancient Music, conductor: Laurence Cummings; London Handel Festival at Shoreditch Town Hall
Reviewed 27 March 2027

Superb individual performances and some innovative design cannot quite lift a production that seeks to reinvent opera seria, thankfully we came away having enjoyed an evening of world class Handel singing

The London Handel Festival's staged opera offering this year was one of the composer's great Italian operas, something of a change from the last few years when the festival has more explored the fringes of the Handel's dramatic art. But Orpha Phelan's staging of Tamerlano was anything but traditional, using the great hall at Shoreditch Town Hall as a found space with the audience on three sides of the action and performing the work in English with surtitles. In her article in the programme book, Phelan seemed to express doubts about the opera or at least she did not quite understand the form. This was a production that sought to reinvent a serious opera seria.

We caught the second of three performances on Friday 27 March 2026. Handel's Tamerlano was conducted by Laurence Cummings with the Academy of Ancient Music. Orpha Phelan directed with designs by Madeleine Boyd and lighting by Matt Haskins. James Laing was Tamerlano (a role we heard him sing with Cambridge Handel Opera in 2022, see my review). Benjamin Hulett was Bajazet (having impressed as Vitaliano in Handel's Giustino at Covent Garden last year, see my review). Nardus Williams was Asteria and Jake Ingbar was Andronico (both singers were in Handel's Partenope at ENO this year, see my review). Kitty Whately was Irene, and Jonathan Brown was Leone. The opera was sung in an uncredited English translation.

Handel: Tamerlano - Benjamin Hulett - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Phelan's big idea was to present each character as an archetype so that the audience did not need to worry about the various elements of backstory. But in a sense, backstory does not matter in Tamerlano, it is one of those sealed box types of Baroque plot where a group of characters is brought together and stuff happens! Phelan and Boyd had given each character a distinctive look, and each singer had their own area of the stage, with all performers present for virtually all the action. Boyd's use of the available area was imaginative, though I did not feel the production used this to the best.

On the small stage was the Academy of Ancient Music (not well lit, so it was difficult to see the individual players) with Tamerlano's area to one side. James Laing's Tamerlano was played as Donald Trump, complete with a scene scoffing burgers, a golf scene and a babyish temper tantrum. It worked because Handel's music for Tamerlano is skittish. 

The director of that 2022 Cambridge Handel Opera production of Tamerlano, Dionysios Kyropoulos explained when I interviewed him that Tamerlano is a sanguine person (in the 18th-century usage of the term) - careless, friendly and jealous, whilst Bajazet is choleric - pompous, proud, stubborn and irritable, and the drama comes from the interaction of the two. Here Phelan and Laing undermined that because Laing's Trump/Tamerlano was bitterly funny and humour has no role in this drama. An audience laughing heartily at Trump/Tamerlano means that they do not find him dangerous. Laing's performance was a dramatic tour de force, though alas his coloratura was rather wayward and overall there was a lack of an element of danger.

Handel: Tamerlano - James Laing, Nardus Williams - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Benjamin Hulett's Bajazet was presented as a Leonardo da Vinci lookalike Renaissance artist. Why? Bajazet is a Turkish sultan captured by Tamerlano. For the first half of the opera, this Bajazet was rather passive, despite a strong performance of the opening aria from Hulett. There was certainly little sense of this Tamerlano and Bajazet needling each other. But at the end of the Throne Room scene, when Bajazet has the long accompanied recitative, Hulett's dramatic instinct took over so that here, and in the climactical death scene he was terrific. Powerful and incisive, yet the coloratura never felt effortful; his sense of line was terrific, yet his words were admirably clear. This was a performance we need to hear again, in a more sympathetic production.

Nardus Williams, as Asteria, did not have a persona to sink into. She was simply Bajazet's daughter, and hence in similar Renaissance garb. This meant that Williams was able to take Asteria and run with her. She is not wilting flower, and whilst Williams gave us some superb Handel singing she also shaped the drama so that her Asteria moved from demure to feisty with hardly disturbing a hair. Her scene at the end of the Throne Room scene where she turned and asked a question of each of the protagonists was masterly, followed by her lovely aria. Elsewhere, the duet with Jake Ingbar's Andronico was perhaps one of the loveliest of things in the whole evening. Williams made you really believe in this Asteria and her journey.

She was wonderfully partnered by Jake Ingbar as Andronico. He was dressed as a sort of 17th century interpretation of what an Ancient Roman or Greek soldier would be like, and hence made a sympathetic pairing to Williams' Asteria. Ingbar sang with great beauty of tone, clarity and sympathy but this Andronico was no wimp. Sometimes that character can seem that way, but here Ingbar, as he prowled around the stage seemed to have real moral authority. His great aria that concluded Act One was terrific stuff and Ingbar's sense of drama only developed more. For once, you understood why this was the role played by Handel's leading man.

Handel: Tamerlano - Kitty Whately, Jake Ingbar - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Kitty Whately's Irene seemed to be a character out of Jane Austen or perhaps Thackeray. When not singing she was busy at her writing desk or doing embroidery. Whately sang with a sense of elegance and soft grain to the voice, yet there was moral authority too. She impressed with the way she would not stand for nonsense, yet when finally this Irene reached agreement with Laing's Trump/Tamerlano there was a sense that she might relish the pomp and power.

The small role of Leone was very finely sung by Jonathan Brown. Yet Leone is a bit-part, a friend to Andronico and Tamerlano. Here, he was a Freud figure complete with his own consulting room, and it was he who opened the action, writing that this was a social experiment. Thus undermining the whole reasoning of the drama. He got both of his arias, which was something of a luxury in a production that was cut.

Phelan's interventions went beyond this. She undermined the great Throne Room scene by staging it not in the main, central acting space but instead using a cramped space on the hall's main stage. Trump/Tamerlano's desk becoming the Throne, and the moment when Bajazet lays down in front of the throne and says Asteria must step on him to ascend was entirely lacking. Similarly, the banquet scene in Act Three was skimped and lacked any sense of ceremonial.

Handel: Tamerlano - Jake Ingbar, Nardus Williams - London Handel Festival (Photo: Craig Fuller)

The English translation was uncredited. It was modern and rather penny plain, but it was clear that this was more a version than a translation with the words being adjusted to fit Phelan's concept. The whole production felt that Phelan wilfully misunderstood the underlying fundamentals of opera seria and that rather than reinventing, she reshaped the opera in her own image. The pity was that she drew superb performances from her cast. Each individual was truly compelling, yet there were times when the arias felt as if they each existed independent of each other, and whilst Hulett's performance in Bajazet's death scene was superb, it lacked the sense of shock that a really great production of this opera brings.

Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music were on stunning form, and the orchestra almost became another character in the action.

The London Handel Festival's creation of its Handel Opera Studio is an admirable thing, enabling us to explore Handel's stage works in modern productions. But next time, can we please have a director that understands and is sympathetic to opera seria before they try and dismantle it.

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