Light & shade: Laurence Cummings, Academy of Ancient Music & a terrific cast make Handel's Serse into a captivating & engaging evening in the theatre

Handel: Serse - Paula Murrihy, Louise Alder - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Handel: Serse; Paula Murrihy, Louise Alder, Rachel Redmond, Rebecca Leggett, Claudia Huckle, Luca Tittoto, Thomas Chenhall, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican Hall
Reviewed 19 June 2026

A lightly staged concert performance which wore scholarship and technical prowess lightly, bringing out the light and shade in Handel's opera and making a captivating and engaging evening

Perhaps because Nicholas Hytner's 1985 production at English National Opera cast such a long shadow (it was last revived in 2014 with Alice Coote and Sarah Tynan, see my review) stagings of Handel's Serse are not particularly common and recent London outings have been in concert. 

In concert, the performance can avoid taking too much of a stand on how funny the opera is. During Handel's lifetime performances would have been notable for the way the work wrong-footed audiences. Presented as an opera seria, it avoids many of the standard tropes: arias are often short, less than half the arias are da capo and the exit aria is rare. The whole opening scene has a fluidity that we now know looks forward to Handel's methods in oratorio, creating large structures from smaller segments. But after the hero's opening cavatina (here Serse's 'Ombra mai fui') audiences would have expected him to get a big aria and leave. Not a bit. And then the heroine's opening aria is variously done off-stage and interrupted! The result is a naturalism that modern audiences enjoy but which would have wrong-footed contemporary listeners and which means we can never really recapture the opera's original effect.

On Friday 19 June 2026, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music chose to present Handel's Serse at the Barbican Centre with a very light dramatic touch in a concert staging blessedly free from concept and featuring a strong cast. Paula Murrihy was Serse with Louise Alder as Romilda, Rachel Redmond as Atalanta, Rebecca Leggett as Arsamene, Claudia Huckle as Amastre, Luca Tittoto as Ariodate and Thomas Chenhall as Elviro.

Handel: Serse - Rebecca Leggett, Rachel Redmond - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Handel's original cast featured a rather intriguing mix of gender bending. The title role was sung by a soprano castrato (Caffarelli) with Arsamene played 'en travestie' by a woman, then the (female) contralto playing Amastre actually spends most of the opera disguised as a man! Nowadays Serse is sung by female mezzo-sopranos though I have heard it sung by a countertenor (Jake Arditti sang it at Longborough in 2015, see my review) and the gender-fluid aspect of the piece does not seem to have been much explored. At the Barbican, Murrihy, Leggett and Huckle all presented as women dressed as men and the audience accepted it admirably with none of the titters that marred the recent performance of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at The Grange Festival where some audience members seemed to find a female singer referring to herself as a male character as something innately funny. As Frankie Howerd might have said, 'titter ye not'.

Laurence Cummings presided over things from the harpsichord with an ensemble based on 13 strings plus two harpsichords and lute. The result had a lithe and lively feel to it, intimate and vivid yet enough to fill the Barbican Hall without risking sounding undernourished.

The singers all used scores, but there were comings and goings. More importantly in this most fluid of pieces, individuals reacted to each other, no-one switched off because they weren't singing and the whole kept a lively theatrical validity to it so you were engaged by the characters and not worried about scores and music stands.

Ruth Smith's fascinating article in the programme book made an interesting point about the opera. In the original libretto written in 1694 by Silvio Stgampiglia for Bononcini (but based in turn in a libretto written for Cavalli in 1654), the final aria of the opera is given to Serse as a declaration of his renewed love for Amastre. Handel and his unknown librettist transferred this aria to Romilda. This means Serse lacks a real aria of love sung to another character and his final aria is the one calling down fire and brimstone. A showpiece for sure, but it means that we never get Serse in tender, love-sick mood (except for the opening to a plane tree!). In the words of a book I was reading recently, Serse has the emotional intelligence of a turnip.

Handel: Serse - Paula Murrihy, Laurence Cummings - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Paula Murrihy made a wonderfully stylish Serse, bringing out the character's poise and self-contained nature. There was a knowingness in the way Murrihy brought out Serse's sense of control along with some fascinating moments when his view of the world (and love) was confounded. This Serse was funny because Murrihy took him seriously, and she also had a deft way with characterisation which made the performance amusing without us ever laughing at Serse himself. It helped that when Serse did get big arias, Murrihy was able to let rip with magnificent technique and characterisation. That final aria was indeed a showpiece, but it came as the logical culmination of what went before it.

In many ways Romilda is the only truly admirable character in the piece, she is constant to Arsamene and remains so. Louise Alder (who was a terrific Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne in 2024, see my review) was a poised and consummate Romilda. She played the character with the utmost seriousness. Romilda was never funny but the plotting worked because she was so focused. And the last act, where Romilda and Arsamene get married almost despite themselves and whilst still arguing, is funny despite the characters being intensely serious. Alder has the dramatic chops for her big arias, bringing the first two acts down with brilliant Handelian drama, yet also having the right lightness and quick-wittedness in the recitatives.

By contrast, Arsamene is a drip. In the opening scene he fails to tell his brother that yes he knows Romilda and is in love with her, thus catapulting the opera into its ridiculous plot. Even when presented with proof of Romilda's constancy he fails. The power of Rebecca Leggett's performance was that she managed to combine these moments, when her Arsamene was indeed a drip, with some powerful arias towards the end of Act Two and in Act Three where she revealed the depth of his feeling. This Arsamene might be a drip, but he harboured real, intense feelings. By the end of Act Two it felt as of Leggett's Arsamene was goring a pair of 'metaphorical' balls, but not at all, he relapsed in Act Three. The result was a consummately believable performance which helped anchor the work's farcical elements.

Handel: Serse - Claudia Huckle, Luca Tittoto - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Amastre is a slightly strange character in that she is constantly popping up and interfering yet never completely involved in the goings-on. Claudia Huckle brought a lovely rich, dark-toned voice to proceedings and each time she sang of Amastre's sadness, her distress at Serse's infidelity, we really believed it. Amastre might have simply popped up and disappeared again, but Huckle kept us focused and we believed in her.

The liveliness and dramatic fluidity of Serse meant that Handel's contemporaries sometimes referred to it as a ballad opera. The character of Atalanta is straight out of ballad opera. When she has arias they are short and tuneful, and she is not abashed at repeating a good tune! Rachel Redmond revelled in Atalanta's minx-like qualities. Whilst I have seen Redmond performing with all seriousness, here she was a captivating delight as a character who simply loved to make mischief, admitting that she doesn't actually love Arsamene but setting her cap at him seems a good idea, and when this fails she dusts herself off and announces she'll look for someone else. It helped that Redmond really seemed to be having a good time, and we did too!

The other comic character is the servant Elviro. He is a hang-over from the welter of comic servants in Cavalli's original. In Handel, Elviro is nothing but comic, yet he has an important role in the drama. Thomas Chenhall was a complete delight. When actually getting an aria or quasi-aria to sing he revealed a fine, resonant bass voice, but in the various dialogue sections he combined this with verbal wit and a wonderfully mobile face. I have never thought of gurning in association with Handelian opera seria, but Chenhall made Elviro's character manifest in his face. Wonderful.

Handel: Serse - Louise Alder, Laurence Cummings - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

Ariodate is simply a pompous idiot. His accidental misreading of Serse's instructions lead to the opera's ending. Luca Tittoto (who we saw in the title role of Handel's Saul at the Komische Oper in Berlin in 2023, see my review) played things straight and sang his aria with resonant aplomb.

This was an admirably complete version of the opera (with two intervals) and that included the chorus. These were sung by all characters (bar Paula Murrihy's Serse) with the addition of two addition tenors (James Micklethwaite, Sebastian Hill - unnamed in the programme).

This was one of those performances which wore its scholarship and technical prowess lightly, yet it was all there allied to an admirable lack of sending the work up. Where this Serse was funny, it was so because all on stage took their stage-craft completely seriously. Yet when Handel did give his characters something serious to sing, we were appropriately wowed without ever feeling the singer had stepped out of role to sing a 'famous aria'.

Handel: Serse - Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican (Photo: Mark Allan)

A sympathetically fully staged Serse would be a delight, but until then this was a completely captivating evening. 

 

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