Teseo is Handel’s only London opera divided into five acts in the French style. Nicola Haym created an Italian libretto based on Philippe Quinault’s Thésée (set by Lully in 1675) and the score was finished in December 1712. The plot is convoluted but is paced smoothly enough for everything to make sense on stage. However, Axel Köhler’s production frequently subverts the action described in the libretto. For example, neither Quinault nor Haym required Clizia to perform oral sex on Arcane, and that action here adds nothing to the dramatic potency of the scene, while Arcane’s cadenza becomes affected by the saucy action under the covers. Not that this Teseo only seeks cheap laughs: some of Köhler’s imagery is meant to pose a sort of debate about sensual nature being repressed by the war machine.

Jacek Laszczkowski looks every inch the hero but is vocally fragile in heroic music. The dominant figure is Maria Riccarda Wesseling’s Medea, terrifying and tragic in equal measure as the obsessed sorceress determined to have her own way in all things. Köhler concentrates on showing her as an overtly carnal and volatile demon not to be tinkered with. Medea’s hatred is most specifically directed at the virtuous Agilea, who even manages to upstage all of Medea’s vitriolic venom with her exquisite ‘Amarti si vorrei’ (Act 4 scene 7 – sweetly accompanied only by Wolfgang Katschner on the lute).

Not all the singing is satisfying. Act 3 opens with Arcane’s aria ‘Le luci del mio bene sono per me due stelle’, a beautiful pastoral mood that is badly let down by Thomas Diestler’s shaky timbre and vulnerable tuning. Handel composed the role for the contralto Jane Barbier and the music does not comfortably fit the countertenor register. The Lautten Compagney play neatly and with spirit, although the performance is too clipped and lacking in poetry for my liking. Yet there is enough in this DVD to suggest that Teseo deserves a better reputation.