Neatly Sung

As the final opera in their Autumn season of Baroque operas, English Touring Opera have chosen to revive James Conway's production of Handel's Flavio (seen 15 October 2011 at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, London, UK). In style, this semi-serious opera (written in 1723) comes far closer to the rather mixed styles of opera from towards the end of Handel's opera-writing career than the high seriousness of the operas of the 1720s. It seems that Handel's aristocratic patrons in the mid-1720s had a preference for operas that were truly serious operas. But Handel's stupendous sequence of operas for them: Floridante, Ottone, Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Rodelinda, is punctured rather amazingly by Flavio...