Mummy always knows best: Handel’s Agrippina, by English Touring Opera

This joyous production by English Touring Opera makes the most of the music, the characters, and the alternately hilarious and unsettling plot of Handel’s early masterpiece.

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Agrippina is an opera of balance and tension. It reverberates with memorable characters, yet relies on a layer of artificiality. It has moments of real humour, sophistication and elegance, yet examines the most basic human instincts with a coldly cynical eye. Gillian Webster is a brilliant Agrippina: strong, fierce, and indefinably charming. There is something unstoppable in her performance which makes her loveable, even at her most threatening; an engaging, conspiratorial naughtiness which reminded me oddly, but irresistibly, of Margaret Rutherford (who herself had a fasinating life, and whose Miss Marple films are one of my most treasured Saturday-afternoon treats).

For an evening of variety, excitement, intrigue, humour, and death-defying singing – you need look no further.  Click here to read my full review on Bachtrack

A performance by English Touring Opera

At the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

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