Agrippina, Barbican Centre, review: crisp, vibrant proof that Handel still has comic bounce

Written in haste and patched up with material drawn from existing works, Agrippina is Handel’s earliest complete surviving opera, first performed in Venice in 1707, five years before his decisive move to London. Yet it radiates no hint of someone still learning his craft: the score feels integrated and coherent, a brilliant and forceful essay in opera seria form, albeit one long on conversational recitative and short of the extended da capo arias that would mark the works of his maturity.

This mercurial quality gives the action a comic bounce suited to the satirical subject-matter: set in Ancient Rome, it shows Agrippina scheming to outwit her enemies (not least her husband Claudio) in order to propel her ghastly son Nero to the imperial throne. Bizarrely and cynically, it all ends happily, with the bad characters getting what they want rather than what they deserve, very much in the moral manner of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea, which shares some of its characters and plot.

At the Barbican, we were presented with a concert version, a taster for the fully staged production that will follow at Covent Garden in the autumn with the same star singers and conductor. The latter is Maxim Emelyanychev, here leading his baroque band Il Pomo d’Oro; although he looks about fourteen and flings his untidy mop of hair about as if caricaturing a maestro of the old school, he offered a crisp, energised and vibrant reading that never lost theatrical tension. We will be hearing a lot more of Emelyanychev: later this year, he takes over as principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.