Semele, Théâtre de Champs-Élysées

Genaux and De Niese among a superb cast and a pretty seductive McVicar staging

David McVicar's revival production of Handel's oratorio-cum-opera Semele isn't terribly clever or beautiful or impressive, or fecund with ideas or detail or emotion. But it does work. It does tell the story. And what brings colour to its initially rather pasty, unappealing face, and fire and heft to its anaemic belly, is sex and - best of all for those of you who will only be able to catch it in concert at the Barbican next week - one of the most impressive Handel casts I've heard for years.

Opera Italia, BBC Four

Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano communicates the full magic of opera

The backlash begins here with the first of Flavia Rittner's three documentaries: not an operatic wannabe or a gushing celebrity outsider to present, only a conductor who knows and loves his job inside out and a parade of gorgeous, energetic singers all at the very top of their hard-working game in state-of-the-art productions.

Rolando Villazón, Gabrieli Players, Royal Festival Hall

Tenor in Handel is no purist but he is irresistible

Since the passing of Luciano Pavarotti, there’s been a gigantic hole for a tenor of gold-plated opera chops and the gift of communication, and Rolando Villazón - young as he is, at only 38 - already appears to have sealed that gap up effortlessly. His stint as judge on the lamentable Popstar to Operastar on ITV recently left everyone tarnished but him. Villazón not only has a dazzling voice and uniquely electric hair, but sports about on the platform with a puppyish vivacity that brings dead places to life around him and endears him widely.

Musical hands across the ocean

The American Classical Orchestra is generously offering to lighten the gloom of Europeans trapped by the volcanic cloud in New York (although it's hardly the worst place for an enforced stopover). This Saturday the ACO performs the climactic concert of its 25th-anniversary season at the Big Apple's Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, and any stranded European nationals will be given a free ticket if they show their passport at the door.

Tamerlano, Royal Opera

Graham Vick's masterclass on how not to do Baroque opera

Graham Vick's Tamerlano is less of an opera and more of a warning. In four and half hours you see 26 ways of how not to handle the Baroque aria. Dramatic success in Handel and his psychological flights of mainly soliloquising fancy is never easy but last night's ill-fated Royal Opera House production (Placido Domingo called in sick a few weeks back) was a lesson in abject theatrical failure.

Philippe Jaroussky, Concerto Cologne, Barbican

French countertenor hits heights but J C Bach fails to impress

Nesting gay men and posh female totty by the bucketload in the audience last night. Fill any programme with Baroque opera and that’s what you get. Why? Because the Baroque is aspirational pop. It's grounded in the same musical tricks that drive on the chart-topping hits of Kylie or Madonna: pumping ostinati, unshake-offable tunes and harmonic Häagen-Dazs - obvious harmonic loops that you can't get enough of. Though last night the hook was even simpler: a beddable boy.

Messiah, ENO

Community spirit at the Coliseum

There are so many ways a dramatic production of Messiah can go wrong it is almost unbearable to think about it. Certainly, there was a palpable buzz of nervousness in the Coliseum about last night’s audience as they took their seats. Did English National Opera really think it could pull it off? Could it avoid the pitfalls into triteness that surely lurk at every corner? How would the chorus manage it? And please God, let it be better than Glyndebourne’s 2007 St Matthew Passion.
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