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Opha Phelan’s staging presents the action as a grand, Freudian social experiment. It’s a risk – but the production is lifted by outstanding performances from the cast and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Part of this year's London Handel Festival, Apollo e Dafne and The Choice of Hercules are transported to the stage in a captivating production that blends music and dance.

The London Handel Festival offers a chance to hear rarely performed music for Passiontide, with Harry Bicket conducting the English Concert. 

A glorious Esther from Laurence Cummings and the London Handel Singers and Orchestra, with a classy line-up of soloists led by Nardus Williams and Tim Mead.

Director Adele Thomas can do no wrong, sustaining her extraordinary run of fizz with this unlikely concatenation of four Handel cantatas at Stone Nest.

On Easter Monday, this year's London Handel Festival came to a close with Handel's youthful oratorio La Resurrezione in the suitably Baroque setting of London's St Martin-in-the-Fields.

There was a celebratory atmosphere to launch the 2022 festival, including royal fireworks and coronation anthems, but it was Ukrainian mezzo Anna Starushkevych who provided the evening's most moving moment. 

A pasticcio not seen since 1725, Elpidia contains some excellent music... even if it isn't by Handel!

A strong cast and fine playing from La Nuova Musica gives Handel's Berenice a reasonably fair outing, but its original plot weaknesses constrain this opera from being anything more than a curio for the Handel connoisseur. 

An impressive display of singing technique isn't enough to make RCM's Ariodante connect with hearts and minds.

Handel Singing Competition, which forms part of London Handel Festival, is unique in that the participants sing only Handel in all the rounds. 

David Fay was disappointed by Revolutionary Drawing Room's 25th anniversary concert, a performance of Haydn's Seven Last Words at St George's, Hanover Square which lacked emotional engagement.

A reconstruction of a long-lost opera by Handel gives some exciting young singers the chance to shine at the London Handel Festival, even if the plot might be better back in the mists of obscurity. 

Metastasio's tale of noble Roman suicide was made into a pasticcio by Handel in 1732: and, after 283 years of silence, returned to the London stage as part of the 2015 London Handel Festival. 

Is Handel’s Semele an oratorio or an opera? Of course Handel himself called it an oratorio but some suggest it is the English-language opera that he never wrote. 

As a highlight of this year's London Handel Festival, the composer's rarely heard oratorio Deborah was given a strong and committed performance by Laurence Cummings and a fine cast.

Five hours with five counter tenors: a virtuoso stand-off which impresses, even astounds, but ultimately exhausts even the most dedicated audience by its refusal to cut a single note of what becomes a very long, florid opera by Jommelli. 

Virtuostic and expressive playing from all performers in a challenging and enjoyable programme of Handel arias and sonatas, plus music from two contemporaries.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a Handel opera in pursuit of a happy ending must have a few twists and turns, and Ariodante has everything you would expect.

Despite a disappointingly static production, the cast shine in the Royal College of Music's producion of Handel's rarity Arianna in Creta.

The culmination of the London Handel Festival is a much anticipated event, and tonight’s performance of Handel’s radiant composition L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was no exception. With an array of eminent musicians performing to a packed St George’s, Hanover Square, the mood was celebratory and the performance had a glow and energy that suited Handel’s mercurial music.

Had you been travelling, in the mid 18th century, around the crowned courts of middle Europe, there would have been little debate as to who was the most celebrated opera composer and ensemble: Johann Adolph Hasse and his company at the Saxon court of Dresden.

Imeneo (1740), Handel’s penultimate opera, is atypical on several fronts. It’s relatively short by Handel’s standards (three acts, under two hours of music); the plot is thin, but not as absurd or complicated as those of some of his other operas (there are no disguises, for example); the title role is composed for a bass; and the opera has a chorus which participates in the plot, rather than just

Probably no other work in the repertoire has such mystical status as Bach's Matthew Passion. Phrases like "The Greatest Work in the Western Canon", trip glibly off the tongue while failing to illuminate its greatness or acknowledge its strangeness. It is the sacred cow of sacred cows.

Riccardo Primo, Re d’Inghilterra (or in English, Richard I), is Handel’s only opera based on the story of an English monarch, and it was premiered in the coronation year of King George II in 1727 (although in fact it was composed the year before but postponed).

The final of this year’s Handel Singing Competition, which opened the 2012 London Handel Festival, was a rare occasion when the winner of the First Prize matched the winner of the Audience Prize, giving satisfaction all round.

A true highlight of this year's London Handel Festival was a performance of the dramatic oratorio Saul, featuring a large cast of young soloists, including several previous finalists of the Festival's annual singing competition, all now getting well established in their solo careers.

The final of the 10th Handel Singing Competition (part of the London Handel Festival) was an all girls’ affair: of the five finalists, three were sopranos and two mezzo-sopranos. Each singer performed a 20 minute all-Handel programme of her own choice. Choosing a well-balanced programme is considered a vital part of this final presentation.

This week, the annual London Handel Festival, now in its 34th year, opened with a new production of his opera Rodelinda.