Musically, an evening of complete enjoyment: Olivia Fuchs's playful 'Love Island' setting for Handel's Amadigi in Buxton

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - Tim Morgan, Hilary Cronin, Rowan Pierce - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula; Tim Morgan, Rowan Pierce, Hilary Cronin, James Hall, director: Olivia Fuchs, the English Concert, conductor: Erin Helyard; Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House
Reviewed 20 July 2026

By turns playful and distracting, Olivia Fuchs's production allowed a fine young cast to develop strong performances combining enjoyment and engagement with technical bravura

Handel's opera Amadigi di Gaula (1715) belongs to a small group of operas he wrote when he first came to London and the exact form of his style of opera seria was not yet fixed. Like its predecessor Teseo (1713), Amadigi is based on a French source and there are tantalising hints that the original plans for the opera included French elements such as dancing. [see my article on Handel's experimental early London period.] As it is, Amadigi has a freedom of form that makes it attractive to modern directors.

Olivia Fuchs has directed Handel's Amadigi di Gaula for the Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House. We caught the final performance on 20 July 2026. Erin Helyard (artistic director of Pinchgut Opera) conducted the English Concert with Tim Morgan (replacing Jake Ingbar) as Amadigi, Rowan Pierce as Oriana, Hilary Cronin as Melissa and James Hall as Dardano. Designs were by Eleanor Bull with lighting by Ben Pickersgill.

Both Cronin and Morgan have form with this opera. Tim Morgan sang the title role with English Touring Opera in 2021 (directed by James Conway, conducted by Jonathan Peter Kenny, see my review), whilst Hilary Cronin sang Oriana in concert with the English Concert (conducted by Kristian Bezuidenhout, see my review).

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - James Hall - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

The opera has one of those 'black box' plots beloved of opera seria: the characters all confined to a single place. Here, four people in a love tangle: Melissa loves Amadigi who loves Oriana as does Dardano, all complicated by Melissa's power as a sorceress. What elevates the opera is the extraordinary power of the music for Melissa and Dardano, both of whom are disappointed in love.

New research links Handel's organist in Dublin with the Scottish fiddler & composer Charles Macklean

Dr Aaron McGregor (Photo: Campbell Parker)

Advertisements for Handel's performances in Dublin in 1741 and 1742 (when he premiered Messiah) give the name of his organist as “Mr M’Lean” or “Mr Maclaine” and that is all we knew. 

Until now, when research by Dr Aaron McGregor of the University of Aberdeen has linked this figure with an 18th-century Scottish fiddler and composer, Charles Macklean, thanks in part to documents arising from Macklean's complex marital history.

Dr McGregor explains: "Charles Macklean has always been a fascinating but somewhat shadowy figure in Scottish musical history. He appears in north-east Scotland as a music teacher, establishes himself among Edinburgh’s leading musicians, produces some remarkable Scottish fiddle music and publishes a collection of violin sonatas, but then seems to disappear from the historical record. Once I started to delve into the sources, the project grew enormously."

Dr McGregor originally began investigating Macklean because of his connections to north-east Scotland, where he taught and was later appointed master of Aberdeen’s music school. Macklean was already known to scholars of Scottish music as a violinist and composer of Scots tunes and Italianate sonatas, but his wider career and connections beyond Scotland remained largely unexplored. 

Central to the discovery was a complex legal petition compiled by Macklean’s wife, Jean Larini, after he abandoned her, and she needed to prove the validity of their marriage. The daughter of a celebrated 18th-century acrobat noted for her ability to perform on a rope, Larini belonged to a travelling performance troupe in which Macklean himself appears to have been involved during the early part of his career. 

The document brought together detailed testimony about Macklean’s travels, employment and personal life, thus allowing Dr McGregor to make the connection to Dublin and Handel, placing Macklean in Handel’s professional circle during the composer’s celebrated Irish season of 1741–42, which culminated in the premiere of Messiah. 

Research also uncovered evidence linking Macklean romantically and professionally with the soprano Christina Maria Avolio, one of Handel’s leading singers. Avolio later appeared in Dublin, where records suggest she performed under the name 'Mrs McLean'. There is evidence that Macklean and Christina Maria Avolio were living together in Edinburgh by 1741, with Macklean’s profession recorded as an organist.

Dr McGregor has completed a scholarly article on Macklean’s life and work, further details from the University of Aberdeen website. 

The research also informs a performance at the Glasgow Barons Early Music Festival, taking place at Govan Old Parish Church on 24 July. The performance will launch the new early music ensemble The Curious Collection, featuring Dr McGregor on violin alongside soprano Mhairi Lawson, cellist Alison McGillivray, and harpsichordist William Cole. Further details from the ensemble's website.

Giulio Cesare at the Grange: superb music performances compensate for David Alden's scattershot approach to Handel's masterpiece

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Zheng Jiang, Owen Willetts, Jess Dandy - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

Handel: Giulio Cesare in Egitto; Tim Mead, Sarah Brady, Jess Dandy, Zheng Jiang, James Atkinson, director: David Alder, Early Opera Company, conductor Christian Curnyn; The Grange Festival
Reviewed 25 June 2026

Superbly satisfying musical performances all round from a cast who enter with a will into director David Alden's eclectic vision, clearly responding to his approach no matter how scattershot the ideas. 

When watching modern productions of Handel's Giulio Cesare it is easy to get a bit blazé. But it is worth remembering quite how far we have come. New York City Opera's ground-breaking production of the work with Beverly Sills dazzling as Cleopatra and a bass Cesare (Norman Treigle), came in 1966, the first uncut performance (in modern times) with voices at the correct pitch was at the Barber Institute in Birmingham in 1972, then English National Opera's production directed by John Copley, conducted by Charles Mackerras with Janet Baker and Valerie Masterson came in 1978. This was cut, but sympathetically, and Copley's production was rather stately yet it demonstrated that this type of opera belonged in the modern opera house. By 2005, at Glyndebourne, David McVicar's production had the confidence to reinvent the work without doing it violence and we now had period instruments in the pit.

Veteran director David Alden's career has paralleled much of this timeline. He began directing at Opera Omaha in the 1970s and his first European production was Verdi's Rigoletto for Scottish Opera in the late 1970s (and yes, I was there). He became famous (infamous) for his productions at ENO during the powerhouse era and I remember his production of Handel's Ariodante as being a powerful example of the way modern theatre direction could be brought to Handel.

Alden's enthusiasm for Handel seems undimmed and the Grange Festival invited him to direct a new production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at this year's festival. It turns out to be the first time Alden has directed by work. We caught the final performance on 25 June 2026. Christian Curnyn conducted the Early Opera Company with Tim Mead as Giulio Cesare, Sarah Brady as Cleopatra, Hugh Cutting as Tolomeo, Jess Dandy as Cornelia, Zheng Jiang as Sesto, James Atkinson as Achilla, Owen Willetts as Nireno, and Tristan Hambleton as Curio. Designs were by Jon Morrell, movement by Tim Claydon and lighting by Matthew Richardson. There was no chorus (the choral numbers were sung by the ensemble), but there was a movement group of five. Continuo was provided by Oliver John Ruthven (harpsichord), Eligio Quinteiro (theorbo) and Andrew Skidmore (cello).

Giulio Cesare is a long opera. When English Touring Opera performed it uncut in 2017 they spread it over two evenings (a brave experiment, see my review). At the Grange it was performed cut (of course) with one interval, mid-way through Act Two.

Alden and Morrell's approach to the work seems to have involved a lot of free association. Egypt, right? So Nireno (Owen Willetts) was a mummy, there were lots of Ancient Egyptian symbols, Tolomeo's (Hugh Cutting) garden was full of oppressive plants and dangerous animals (including snakes). When, at the end of Act Two, Sarah Brady's Cleopatra says she's dying (a metaphorical turn of phrase), the jackal-headed god appeared to row her to the underworld, and elsewhere in the opera she had a fascination with asps! Costumes were similarly eclectic with different frames of reference. Curio (Owen Willetts) was a real Roman centurion, but Cesare (Tim Mead) seemed stuck in the mid-20th century, whilst Sesto (Zheng Jiang) was a schoolboy who when girding himself for action, dressed as an American footballer!

The whole approach felt a bit scattershot, and rather reminded me of the worst of 1980s and 1990s opera direction. Some scenes were (deliberately) funny such as the musical chairs during Tolomeo and Cesare's first meeting. Other moments were found funny by the audience but I was unclear whether Alden intended this. The result was busy, with the stage nearly always full of colour and movement. The hardworking movement group were constantly used. Some decisions were clearly practical: the opening scenes of Act Three were played in front of the curtain because the set for Cesare's emergence from the sea was complex. Yet, given the curtain, Alden could not resist a series of gags with singers crawling under it and failing to find the split in the curtains. Not for the first time, I felt that non-English directors should be given a crash course in English humorous references (curtain gags are pure Morecambe & Wise).

Handel: Giulio Cesare - Hugh Cutting, Sarah Brady - The Grange Festival (Photo: Richard Hubert Smith)

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'.

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.

Handel's Rinaldo recast as pacey drama by Royal Academy of Music with some star quality in the solo roles

Handel: Rinaldo - Ellie Donald, Agustin Pennino - Royal Academy Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Handel: Rinaldo: Agustin Pennino, Caroline Blair, Ellie Donald, Joel Robson, director: Julia Burbach, conductor: David Bates, Royal Academy Opera; Susie Sainsbury Theatre at Royal Academy of Music
Reviewed 18 March 2026

Handel's first Italian opera for London, reshaped as a vivid and pacey two hours with real Handelian star quality from some of the cast and a vibrantly urgent account of the score.

Having set some strong librettos during his four-year stay in Italy, from 1706 to 1710, in works like Agrippina and Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Handel's first opera for London, Rinaldo, which premiered in 1711 at the Queen's Theatre featured a far less impressive libretto. Using a scenario created by impresario Aaron Hill, the work aimed for visual spectacle to help show off the theatre's machinery. Handel's approach to the music was similar and his re-use of existing material from his Italian period has led some to comment that the work is closer to a pasticcio, a 'best of' assemblage. But whatever we think the work's dramatic logic (or lack thereof), it is undoubtedly full of good things.

This seems to have been the approach of director Julia Burbach and musical director David Bates for the new production of Handel's Rinaldo from Royal Academy Opera. Double cast, on Wednesday 18 March 2026 we caught Agustin Pennino as Rinaldo, Caroline Blair as Almirena, Ellie Donald as Armida, Joel Robson as Argante, Yihui Wang as Goffredo and Pavel Basov as Eustazio. Designs were by Bettina John, lighting by Robert Price and choreography by Cameron McMillan. The Royal Academy Sinfonia was in the pit.

Handel: Rinaldo - Agustin Pennino, Caroline Blair - Royal Academy Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Burbach's intention in the production seems to have been to create a viable dramatic framework for the great numbers from the opera, giving the cast opportunities beyond a simple recital. There were significant cuts: the opening scene of Act Two, with the mermaids/sirens, was cut, the recitative was pared down to the bone and many arias shorn of the B sections. The resulting work, as presented, was a pacey and vivid two hours in the theatre (including interval). Burbach's scenario played up the 'boys own' nature of the original (something Robert Carsen's rather Harry Potter-ish school production at Glyndebourne brought out).

Vital & engaging: Handel's early English masque, Acis and Galatea, alongside his setting of Dryden's A Song for St Cecilia, harking back to concerts from 1739

Auguste Ottin
Polyphemus Surprising Acis and Galatea
1852-63, Luxembourg Gardens

Handel: Acis and Galatea (1718), Ode for St Cecilia; Carolyn Sampson, Laurence Kilsby, William Thomas, Jonathan Hanley, Archie Inns, Gabrieli, Paul McCreesh; London Handel Festival at Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 14 March 2026

Harking back to one of Handel's concerts from 1739, Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli presented vital performances of two contrasting works with engaging solos and fine instrumental playing. 

Handel's Acis and Galatea and his Ode for St Cecilia is not a particularly obvious pairing. Yet in 1739, when Handel presented his first London season without any Italian opera because the continental wars made recruiting Italian singers difficult, that is exactly what he did. The season included Alexander's Feast and initially Handel paired the Ode for St Cecilia with Alexander's Feast, but after the first performance he changed plans, perhaps wanting greater contrast. Instead, the Ode for St Cecilia was paired with Acis and Galatea, reverting to an adaptation of the work's original 1718 masque version rather than the grander serenata version Handel created in 1732.

On Saturday 14 March 2026, Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli evoked his concert at Smith Square Hall with the original 1718 version of Acis and Galatea alongside the Ode for St Cecilia. The cast for Acis and Galatea featured Laurence Kilsby and Carolyn Sampson in the title roles, plus William Thomas as Polyphemus, Jonathan Hanley as Damon and Archie Inns as Coridon. Then Kilsby and Sampson took the solo parts in the Ode for St Cecilia.

The inclusion of Acis and Galatea in the concert seemed somewhat a luxury for the festival given that it staged the 1718 version at Stone Nest in 2022, also with William Thomas as Polyphemus [see my review]. That said, experimenting with Handel's own somewhat unwieldy, by modern standards, concert programmes is exactly what this type of festival should be doing.

Elegance, exuberance and one remarkable woman: the Academy of Ancient Music travels to Georgian London to discover the lost world of musical innovator, Elisabetta da Gambarini

Elisabetta da Gamberini

Handel, Elisabetta de Gambarini, Geminiani, Carlo Tessarini; Mhairi Lawson, Academy of Ancient Music led by Bojan Čičić; Milton Court Concert Hall
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 12 March 2026

The Academy of Ancient Music plunges deep into the colourful world of Elisabetta da Gambarini - composer, virtuoso and entrepreneur as well as the first woman ever to publish music in England

The Academy of Ancient Music’s tribute to Elisabetta da Gambarini and her contemporaries proved an enjoyable and unforgettable show with an excellent programme exploring the vibrant musical landscape of Georgian London showcasing the influence of immigrant musicians and the pioneering role of women engaged in 18th-century music-making.  

Relating mostly to the late baroque and classical music period, Gambarini (who lived for only 33 years from 1731 to 1765) achieved distinction by being an all-round musician performing on and composing for a variety of instruments as well as voice. Her compositions were known to reflect that of vocal work instead of instrumental patterns.  

Born on 7th September 1731 in Holles Street, Marylebone, Elisabetta Gambarini’s father, Charles Gambarini, acted as Counsellor to the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel. He died in 1754 while his wife Joanna (Giovanna Paula) Stradiotti died in 1774. A nobleman from Lucca, Italy, her father published A Description of the Earl of Pembroke’s Pictures 1731 while her mother, of similar status from Dalmatia, is thought to have been a tutor to the nobility. 

The third of four children, Elisabetta (who on 20th March 1764 married Etienne Chazal at St Martin-in-the-Fields) was the only sibling surviving to maturity. She died at her home in Castle Court, Strand, in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on 9th February 1765 and was interred at St James’ Church, Piccadilly, five days later - 14th February. 

Although there’s no specific information regarding her formal musical education there is speculation that Gambarini may have studied with Francesco Geminiani, composer of The Enchanted Forest, a baroque orchestral work inspired by Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata often performed with dance thereby depicting a mystical perilous forest. 

It takes two! Countertenor Agustín Pennino & mezzo-soprano Ella Orehek-Coddington on sharing the role of Rinaldo in Royal Academy Opera's forthcoming production of Handel's opera

Handel: Rinaldo - Agustín Pennino in rehearsal - Royal Academy Opera

Handel's Rinaldo was the first opera he wrote for London, in 1711. It was astoundingly popular; the first full Italian opera seria written for London, it went on to have over 50 performances during Handel's lifetime in the period from 1711 to 1731. During this period, the opera went through a remarkable number of revisions. The title role was written for the castrato Nicolini, whose performances in London in the period 1707 to 1717 went a long way towards establishing Italian opera in the city. [Countertenor Randall Scotting's recent disc, Divine Impresario: Nicolini on Stage, explores the castrato's musical world, see my review].

Whilst the title role in the 1731 revival of Rinaldo was also given to another castrato, Senesino, in the intervening period revivals saw the title role sung by both castratos and female altos. During the modern period, revivals have similarly given the role to men and to women; at Glyndebourne Opera, Robert Carsen's 2011 production saw Sonia Prina as Rinaldo [see my review of the BBC Proms performance], but later revivals of the production would see the role given to countertenors Christophe Dumaux, Iestyn Davies [see my review], and Jake Arditti.

On 17 March 2025, Royal Academy Opera is presenting Handel's Rinaldo in a production directed by Julia Burbach and conducted by David Bates. Performances run until 20 March with the title role shared between Uruguayan countertenor Agustín Pennino and Australian-Maltese mezzo-soprano Ella Orehek-Coddington. I recently caught up with Ella and Agustin to find out how sharing a role in a production worked with two different voice types.

Handel: Rinaldo - Ella Orehek-Coddington in rehearsal - Royal Academy Opera

Continuing where Handel left off: Opera Settecento's completion of Handel's Titus L'Empereur at London Handel Festival was a terrific showcase for some of the composer's lesser-known arias

Handel/Renioult/Duarte: Titus l'Empereur; Steffen Jespersen, Rachel Redmond, Chiara Hendrick, Hugo Hymas, Lucija Vaarsic, Edward Grint, Francis Gush, Opera Settecento, Leo Duarte; London Handel Festival at St George's Church, Hanover Square
Reviewed 5 March 2026

Handel's tantalising unfinished, unrealised operatic fragment used as the starting point for a Racine-inspired opera showcasing some of Handel's lesser-known arias in engaging and involving performances 

During the 1731/32 season, Handel began a new opera, titled on the manuscript Titus l'Empereur. Only the overture, three scenes including two arias were completed. Handel seems to have abandoned the work and the material was reused in his next opera Ezio (which was delivered late). 

Having given us a whole sequence of Handel's pasticcios, Leo Duarte and Opera Settecento turned to Titus l'empereur for their latest project at the London Handel Festival. On Thursday 5 March 2026 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, they performed a 'new' Handel pasticcio, Titus l'empereur with new recitatives by Pierre-Antoine Renioult and arias from Handel's operas (mainly pre-1732) chosen by Leo Duarte. Countertenor Steffen Jespersen was Titus (emperor of Rome), soprano Rachel Redmond (queen of Palestine, betrothed to Titus) was Berenice, mezzo-soprano Ciara Hendrick was Antioco (king of Comagène and in love with Berenice), tenor Hugo Hymas was Paolino (a confidant of Titus), Lucija Varsic who won the audience prize at last year's Handel Singing Competition was Dalinda (a confidante of Berenice), baritone Edward Grint was Oldauro (a Roman tribune), and countertenor Francis Gush was Arsete (a confidant of Antioco).

Handel's libretto for the putative Titus l'Empereur has not survived, but it seems to have been intended as an adaptation of Racine's 1670 play Bérénice. Given Handel's use of French in the title (despite the opera being in Italian), commentators suggest that Racine's play was being adapted directly and that the halting of work was caused by the librettist not being up to the task. Bérénice is in fact a relatively strange work to be considered for adaptation for an Italian opera. The entire play is taken up with the complexities of Titus and Berenice's relationship when he becomes emperor but discovers the Roman people do not want a foreign queen, add in his friend Antioco's unspoken love for Berenice and you have a complex triangle. But that is it. There is no subplot. It is worth bearing in mind that when Handel set the Alceste story in his opera Admeto the librettist introduced an entire subplot that is not in Euripides and not in Gluck's Alceste.

Opera Settecento's solution was to enlist the help of Professor Patrick Boyde in creating a libretto out of Racine's play, which was then translated into Italian by Matteo Dalle Fratte and the recitative set by Pierre-Antoine Renioult in Handelian style. Leo Duarte chose the arias, focusing on the lesser known music from Handel's operas pre-1732 including some that had never been performed. The result did exactly what pasticcios were often intended to do, to showcase music. We had arias from Amadigi, Floridante, Giulio Cesare, Lucio Silla, Ottone, Rinaldo, Scipione, Tamerlano and of course the original ones from Titus l'Empereur which found their way, in altered form, into Ezio. For the more nerdy amongst us, it was a shame that the programme was not able to give us more context for this music. So that, for instance, at a climactic point in Act Two Berenice sings 'Piangero la sore mia' from Giulio Cesare, but it definitely was not the well-known version of the aria. [see Leo Duarte's comment on my Facebook post for a wonderfully full explanation of the origins of the arias].

With one exception, arias were sung with their original texts which is something that may not have happened in Handel's day but which is more understandable in our present musicologically conscious age. 

Whether Racine's Bérénice was the idea vehicle is a point in question. Handel may have indeed been right. The final opera as performed in St George's Hanover Square might have been called 'Titus the ditherer'. Or, given that the plot happens almost simultaneously with that of Mozart's opera, The Dithering of Titus!

Vital, alive & compelling: Handel's Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno from David Bates & La Nuova Musica at Wigmore Hall

Handel: Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno - Jeanine De Bique, Polly Leech, Christopher Lowrey, Nick Pritchard, La Nuova Musica, David Bates - Wigmore Hall (Photo: image capture from Wigmore Hall live stream)

Handel: Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno; Jeanine De Bique, Polly Leech, Christopher Lowrey, Nick Pritchard, La Nuova Musica, David Bates; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 28 February 2026

Vivid musical presence and compelling drama make this concert performance of Handel's first oratorio an engrossing evening, vividly alive and vital playing combining with vocal beauty and sense of drama 

Handel's first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) had a remarkably long life. Premiered in Rome in 1707 during Handel's youthful Italian trip, the work not only provided source material for many of Handel's subsequent works, but resurfaced in London in 1737 (and 1739) in a revised and expanded version, still in Italian, as Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità and finally was recast in English as The Triumph of Time and Truth in 1757 as a stop-gap because the blind and ageing Handel was no longer capable of writing new work.

It is a remarkably exuberant piece. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili's highly intelligent libretto might be somewhat conceptual with conversion of Beauty from a yearning for worldly enjoyment personified by Pleasure to an aspiration to more secure rewards revealed by Time and Disillusion, but in execution Pamphili gave Handel sufficient character and drama that the composer was to create a quasi-opera. It is worth bearing in mind that the work was written at a time when there was no opera in Rome. The piece works as a psychological study, as demonstrated by Jacopo Spirei's staging at Buxton in 2024 which successfully recast the oratorio as family drama. But it also contains music which demonstrates Handel at his best. Italy had clearly been liberating for him and his musico-dramatic experiments in his cantatas paid dividends in works like Il trionfo.

David Bates and La Nuova Musica treated us to Handel's original Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Wigmore Hall on Saturday 28 February 2026. Soprano Jeanine De Bique was Belezza, mezzo-soprano Polly Leech as Piacere, countertenor Christopher Lowrey as Disinganno and tenor Nick Pritchard was Tempo. David Bates directed the 17 players of La Nuova Musica from the harpsichord.

Sonic & dramatic splendour: Jonathan Cohen, Arcangelo & a strong cast demonstrate the richness to be found in Handel's Saul to open the London Handel Festival

Handel: Saul - Christopher Purves, Arcangelo (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Handel: Saul; Christopher Purves, Hugh Cutting, Jessica Cale, Emőke Baráth, Linard Vrielink, Liam Bonthrone, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen; London Handel Festival at Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 18 Feburary 2025

One of those performances of Saul where we could let our imagination run riot with a cast who brought out the rich drama of the work alongside the very vibrant, present and intent account the music from Arcangelo

The 2026 London Handel Festival opened on Wednesday 18 February 2026 with a performance of one of Handel's grandest oratorios, Saul. The work was performed by the festival's principal ensemble in residence, Arcangelo, conducted by Jonathan Cohen, the ensemble's founder and the Festival's principal artistic advisor. And the event coincided with the announcement that Arcangelo and Cohen's relationship with the Festival will continue until 'at least' 2029.

The concert took place not at St George's Hanover Square, a favourite venue with the Festival, but at Smith Square Hall which meant that Cohen and Arcangelo could present Saul in all its sonic and dramatic splendour fielding a choir of 30 singers and orchestra with twenty strings plus of course flutes, recorders, oboes, bassoons, trombones, timpani and continuo. The cast had distinct links to Glyndebourne Opera's 2025 revival of Barrie Kosky's 2015 production: Christopher Purves as Saul, Linard Vrielink as Jonathan and Liam Bonthrone as the High Priest were all in the Glyndebourne performances which were conducted by Jonathan Cohen. At Smith Square, they were joined by Hugh Cutting as David, Jessica Cale as Michal, and Emőke Baráth as Merab.

As Ruth Smith points out in her excellent article in the programme book, Handel's Saul was revolutionary in many ways. Only his fourth English oratorio: the first three were Esther, Deborah and Athalia. Saul was also his first dramatic work with a bass lead, something Handel would return to four years later when he wrote Samson with tenor John Beard (Jonathan in Saul) in the title, lead role.

Saul was the longest English music-theatre work to date and Handel used larger forces than any English music theatre work or Italian opera previously performed in England. In our modern age when bigger can seem to be the norm, it is salutary to remember that the sort of large choral/orchestral forces Handel gathered together for Saul were unusual, that people would have to refer back to the Coronation of 1727, when Handel's specially written anthems were performed by significantly large forces.

Handel: Saul - Jessica Cale, Emőke Baráth, Linard Vrielink, Christopher Purves, Arcangelo (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Smith also points out that English oratorio was not acted and that much of the drama can be found in the music. Whilst it is tempting to stage works like Saul, the vision of a director can sometimes seem somewhat reductive and allowing the music space; giving our imaginations free rein is more productive. Not that this performance was lacking in physical drama. Linard Vrielink sang his role from memory whilst Christopher Purves rarely needed his score. Purves' Saul was a character hard to contain and Purves prowled the stage constantly and projected Saul's mental deterioration even when not singing. 

The other singers reacted and expressed. There was a surprising physicality to Hugh Cutting and Linard Vrielink's portrayal of David and Jonathan's relationship. The version of the oratorio performed (which was slightly cut but admirably complete) included David's solo in the Lament which has a remarkable homo-erotic inference. This was oratorio as drama without the necessity of constantly refreshing the stage picture that a fully staged performance can require.

Handel through Mozart’s eyes: Handel Hendrix House offers us a chance to see Mozart studying Handel's music

Mozart's fugue based on Handel (Photo: Handel Hendrix House)

Mozart visited London in 1764-5 as part of a long European tour with his family. At just eight years old, Mozart performed Handel’s music in the presence of royalty, participated in concerts that included Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and experienced live performances of many more works including Alexander’s Feast. 

Mozart went on to study and make new arrangements of Handel’s fugues, dramatic oratorios and odes, finding inspiration in Handel’s mastery of the rules of counterpoint and the expressive power of his music. Mozart was reported to say that ‘Handel understands effect better than any of us…when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt.’  

Over 20 years after that London visit Mozart would produce modern versions of Handel's works for performances in Vienna including Acis and Galethea (1788), the Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (1790), Alexander's Feast (1790) and Messiah (1789). 

Age 26 in 1782, Mozart would transcribe string quartet the fugue from Handel’s Suite in F for harpsichord (written 60 years earlier). The manuscript for this, beautifully written in Mozart's hand,  is evidence of Mozart’s life-long fascination with Handel’s music and the Baroque master’s influence on Mozart’s own music. 

This manuscript forms the centrepiece of the exhibition, Handel through Mozart’s eyes at Handel Hendrix House from 25 February top 13 September 2026. The exhibition also includes an early printed score of Messiah re-orchestrated by Mozart and 18th-century concert tickets and engravings showing key locations Hanover Square and Vauxhall Gardens where the young Mozart wowed audiences with his keyboard and violin playing in between performances of music by Handel during the child prodigy’s visit to London.

Handel's dining room at Handel Hendrix House (Photo: Christopher Ison)

Full details from the Handel Hendrix House website. 

 

Deidamia, Messiah, 20 years of the festival orchestra: International Handel Festival Göttingen 2026

George Petrou's producttion of Handel's Deidamia at Wexford Festival Opera in 2025 with Nicolò Balducci  (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

The International Handel Festival Göttingen returns for 2026 with 96 events across 12 days, from 14 to 25 May 2026, involving around 550 artists. The headline event is a staging of Handel's final opera, Deidamia in a co-production with Wexford Festival Opera directed and conducted by Göttingen's artistic director George Petrou. The production debuted at Wexford last year, see my review, and Bruno de Sá, Sophie Junker, and Nicolò Balducci will be returning to their roles in Göttingen.

The festival opens with a concert celebrating the 20th anniversary of the festival orchestra, and George Petrou conducts them in a programme of excerpts from Rameau's Les Indes Galantes, Bach's Suite No. 3 in D major and Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. The oratorio this year is Handel's Messiah, conducted by George Petrou with the NDR Vokalensemble and soloists Ana Maria Labin [whom we last heard in Rossini with Jakob Lehmann and Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique, see my review], Lena Sutor-Wernich, Ru Charlesworth and Drew Santini. No word, as yet, of which version of Messiah is being performed.

Visitors to the festival include soprano Julia Lezhneva with lutenist Luca Pianca, recorder virtuoso Dorothee Oberlinger with her Ensemble 1700 and soprano Bruno de Sá, recorder player Erik Bosgraaf and the ensemble filoBarocco exploring the influence of Polish folk music on Telemann, former Artistic Director of the Festival, harpsichordist Laurence Cummings with flautist Rachel Brown, and Shunske Sato and Shuann Chai present a recreation of an historic concert from 1885.

There are also concerts across the region, in Hann. Münden, Friedland, Einbeck, Landolfshausen, Osterode and Duderstadt with music from the era of the Thirty Years’ War, early Baroque vocal music for Pentecost Monday, arias from Handel's operas, a musical dialogue between Handel and Bach, and the prizewinners of the göttingen handel competition.

Moving into the modern era, Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale will be performed alongside a cantata by Matthias Weckmann with video projections by Folkert Uhde. Matthias Weckmann was an organist in 17th-century Hamburg and his cantata, Wie liegt die Stadt so wüste (How Desolate Lies the City), was written in 1663 in response to a devastating plague.  

Full details from the festival website. 

 

Carrying the narrative strongly & directly: Solomon's Knot in Handel's Israel in Egypt at Wigmore Hall

Solomon's Knot

Handel: Israel in Egypt; Solomon's Knot; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 22 December 2025

Daringly performing Handel's great choral oratorio with just eight singers, Solomon's Knot bring out the work's narrative quality in a performance the was something of a tour de force

Handelian oratorio was a lot less settled in form than we like to think with the advantage of hindsight. Handel followed Saul, a large-scale dramatic work, with a work that minimised solo contributions and concentrated on the chorus. We now see Israel in Egypt as a Handelian oratorio par excellence, beloved of choirs and choral societies, but Handel's contemporaries were not so sure. The reactions to the premiere of Israel in Egypt in 1739 may well have had as much to do with anti-Handel feeling as the work itself, but certainly Handel's initial conception involving an adaptation of the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline never survived beyond the first couple of performances. Handel himself tried various solutions, but the version of the work that has come down to us is in two parts (confusingly usually called Parts Two and Three).

In later works such as Belshazzar, Handel would go to great pains to characterise the chorus but in Israel in Egypt we find him using the chorus of Israelites as almost the only character, narrating the story directly to us. It was this aspect of the oratorio that came over most strongly in Solomon's Knot's daring presentation of Handel's Israel in Egypt at Wigmore Hall on Monday 22 December 2025.

The extreme psychological approach weakened the dramaturgy: Handel's Ariodante returns to Covent Garden in new production by Jetske Mijnssen

Handel: Ariodante - Royal Opera House (Photo: Bill Knight/RBO)

Handel's Ariodante; Jacquelyn Stucker, Emily D'Angelo, Christophe Dumaux, Elen Villalon, Ed Lyon, Peter Kellner, director: Jetske Mijnssen, conductor: Stefano Montanari; Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Reviewed 19 December 2025

Handel's later masterpiece returns to Covent Garden for the first time since its premiere in a modern psychological production that is full of musical riches but ultimately fails to move

Handel's Ariodante was the first new opera he composed for the theatre at Covent Garden, Handel's long reign at the King's Theatre having come to an end. For modern audiences it is a surprisingly accessible piece with no satirical comedy and no lofty heroics. There is also no subplot, all the characters are involved in the action, and the story is told in a remarkably direct way. It is thus rather surprising that the opera is a relative rarity on UK stages. The Royal Academy of Music staged it in 2023 [see my review] and the Royal College of Music in 2016 [see my review], and there have been concert performances from Joyce DiDonato and Il complesso barocco in 2011 [see my review], Alice Coote and the English Concert in 2017 [see our review] and at Covent Garden in 2020 with Paula Murrihy [see my review].

Harry Fehr staged it for Scottish Opera in 2016 (with Caitlin Hulcup) and David Alden famously staged it at English National Opera in 1993 with occasional revivals, the production also shared with Welsh National Opera, and English Touring Opera did stage it. But Covent Garden's recent new production of Ariodante represented a rare chance to experience the work staged by a professional company.

Jetske Mijnssen's production is a co-production with Opera National du Rhin (where it has already appeared in 2024, see review) and Opera de Lausanne. We caught the performance on Friday 19 December 2025 at the Royal Opera House conducted by Stefano Montanari with Emily D'Angelo as Ariodante [last seen as Ruggiero in Alcina here in 2022, see my review], Jacquelyn Stucker as Ginevra [last seen performing Handel with David Bates and La Nuova Musica at Wigmore Hall this year, see my review], Christophe Dumaux as Polinesso [last seen as Handel's Giulio Cesare in Salzburg this year, see my review], Elena Villalon as Dalinda, Ed Lyon as Lurcanio, Peter Kellner as the King of Scotland and Emyr Lloyd Jones as Odoardo. Set design was by Etienne Pluss with costumes by Uta Meenen.

Handel: Ariodante - Ed Lyon, Christophe Dumaux, Peter Kellner, Emyr Lloyd Jones - Royal Opera House (Photo: Bill Knight/RBO)

'The Lord gave the word': communicability to the fore in Handel's Messiah from Academy of Ancient Music & Laurence Cummings

The chapel of the Foundling Hospital where Handel performed Messiah annually

Handel: Messiah; Nardus Williams, Reginald Mobley, Thomas Walker, Ashley Riches, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican Hall
15 December 2025

A traditional version of the score and fleet speeds, but communicability was to the fore here with soloists and choir projecting both word and meaning, supported by instrumental virtuosity that was understated but definitive

Handel's Messiah is one of those perennials that in one sense always remains the same yet is always different. During Handel's lifetime this was literally the case as the composer adjusted the work for each new batch of soloists, which means that conductors have a whole host of choices. Few people go for some of the more obscure versions, except for those occasional performances that aim to recreate a particular version. The Academy of Ancient Music's performance of Messiah at the Barbican has become something of a regular (if not annual) event, with Laurence Cummings opting for a fairly traditional version of the score.

On Monday 15 December 2025, Laurence Cummings conducted the chorus and orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican Hall with soloists soprano Nardus Williams, countertenor Reginald Mobley, tenor Thomas Walker, and bass Ashley Riches. We saw their performance of the work last year [see my review] but a new set of soloists bring a different feel to the work.

With a choir of 18 and an orchestra based on 14 strings, Cummings opted for speeds that were often on the fleet side, but nothing ever felt rushed. The faster choruses were simply that, and there was plenty of space for expressivity. One bonus was that the gaps between movements were kept to a minimum so that this was a performance that really flowed. 

One feature of previous performances from Cummings at the AAM has been the emphasis on words and communication. The same was true at this performance. Granted, many of us could probably quote Messiah almost word for word, but soloists and choir were all highly attuned to projecting word and meaning.

Style, engagement & joy: Handel's Partenope returns to ENO with a terrific young cast

Handel: Partenope - English National Opera (Photo: Lloyd Winters)

Handel: Partenope; Nardus Williams, Hugh Cutting, Ru Charlesworth, Jake Ingbar, Katie Bray, William Thomas, director: Christopher Alden, conductor: William Cole, English National Opera; London Coliseum
Reviewed 26 November 2025

1920s Paris-set production returns with director Christopher Alden back at the helm and a team of superb young soloists who sing stylishly and enter into the concept with a will

Part of the fun of Handel's Partenope is the games it plays with gender and perceived roles. Arsace is the notional hero, Handel wrote the role for a distinguished castrato, but rather than being a moral example the character is weak having ditched one woman for another. The secondary male lead, Armindo was played by a woman en travestie and the character is timid, taking nearly half the opera to admit his love to Partenope. But the woman that Arsace ditched, Rosmira, appears dressed as a man and the big reveal in Act Three is when Arsace insists that he and Rosmira's male incarnation perform their duel bare-chested. The work's comedy thus comes from this play with the original audience's expectations.

English National Opera's production of Partenope directed by Christopher Alden has played extra games with the audience since its debut in 2008. At the 2017 revival [see my review] Arsace was himself played by a woman (Patricia Bardon) and the production has never, I think, used a woman for Armindo as Handel did.

For ENO's latest revival which we saw on 26 November 2025, casting is firmly based on the characters' gender with a cast of young singers bringing new energy to the production. For this revival Christopher Alden returned to direct and Christian Curnyn, the original conductor, was due to be in the pit though his illness meant that William Cole was in charge. Nardus Williams was Partenope, with Hugh Cutting as Arsace, Ru Charlesworth as Emilio, Jake Ingbar as Armindo, Katie Bray as Rosmira and William Thomas as Ormonte.

Handel: Partenope - Nardus Williams, Jake Ingbar, Ru Charlesworth - English National Opera (Photo: Lloyd Winters)

Alden and designers Andrew Lieberman (sets) and Jon Morrell (costumes) set the opera at a salon in Paris in the 1920s with all the men flitting around Nardus Williams' stylish hostess, Partenope. Whilst I have enjoyed the production over the years, the setting and Alden's approach still does not quite convince. The 'battle' at the opening of Act Two remains unconvincing, but then HGO's 2019 beachside Victorian production had a similar problem [see my review]. From the middle of Act Two to the end of the opera, Alden seems to progressively abandon his own dramatic logic and by the middle of Act Three, when Jake Ingbar's Armindo did a tap dance during his aria and William Thomas's Ormonte oversaw the duet in extravagant 18th century drag, you felt that Alden was simply throwing everything at the piece to keep the audience entertained.