Xerxes by Händel, hAo 20 Beal 2022, Ó (2022/2022), Seoltóir Harry Bicket, St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, United Kingdom

Handel’s spectacular opera of love and power in ancient Persia. Harry Bicket conducts The English Concert and a world-class cast in a concert performance of Serse (Xerxes). Serse rules a vast empire, but the human heart is more difficult to command, and sometimes the beauty of a plane tree is the only constant in a dangerous world. Created to astonish London audiences in 1728, and premiered just minutes from St Martin in the Fields, Handel’s opera Serse is a drama of love, war and civil engineering, and tonight it’s brought sparkling back to life by a team of the world’s leading Handel interpreters – directed by Harry Bicket and starring the “barnstorming” (The Daily Telegraph) Emily D’Angelo as the lovestruck king.