Rinaldo at Glyndebourne review – entertaining but ultimately trivial

The background to the plot of Handel's 1711 opera is the first Crusade, which took place at the end of the 11th century. Given the ongoing situation in the Middle East, it is perhaps unsurprising that Robert Carsen's 2011 production, here revived with a new cast, avoids references to real events, past or present; instead, it prefers to replace more contentious visuals with the heroic fantasies of a bullied schoolboy.

Though the stagecraft is clever – the explosions in the chemistry lab as young Rinaldo and his comrades attack the sorceress Armida's palace are brilliantly entertaining – the way the show is consistently played for laughs feels both relentless and evasive, and ultimately trivial.

Handel's audiences may have viewed the Crusades in a different light to their modern equivalents, but what they came for, apart from spectacle, was fine singing of the arias that explore the emotional relationships between the central characters. Glyndebourne's production is notable in giving gainful employment to no fewer than four countertenors – all of them worth hearing.

Iestyn Davies rises to the varied challenges of the title role with some aplomb, and though neither Tim Mead's Goffredo nor Anthony Roth Costanzo's Eustazio musters quite enough of the martial air respectively required by the nominal Christian commander and his brother, their voices come through effectively, as does that of James Laing as the Christian Magus, here a dotty chemistry professor.

On the Muslim side, Karina Gauvin's Armida, presented as a dominatrix in leather, sings with flamboyance if less-than-ideal accuracy, while Joshua Hopkins could do with more sheer heft as her paramour, Argante. Christina Landshamer simpers prettily as Rinaldo's beloved Almirena, though the evening's best features are Ottavio Dantone's crisp conducting and the playing of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.