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Handel’s Giulio Cesare in a staged concert performance at the Barbican, given under the experienced baton of René Jacobs, was something to look forward to keenly, especially for that tiny minority of us who think the work a great one but the enormously popular Glyndebourne production a vulgar travesty. In the event, it was rather a flat evening. Perhaps if one way of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Barbican Centre were to be the introduction of effective air-conditioning into the stifling atmosphere of the Hall, such huge events (this was another almost four-and-a-half-hour marathon) wouldn’t seem so interminable. Perhaps, too, the extreme frequency with which Handel operas are being performed in London at present, with five in the past few weeks, contributes to the feeling I have that they possess less individuality than the pundits claim for them. Whether it’s Alexander the Great in India, or Nero and his mother in Rome, or figures from medieval romances in never-never land, or Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt, what the subject-matter really is, and obviously, is power, love and betrayal, political and erotic. Any idea that these works might aid our understanding of historical figures is ludicrous. The main differences among the Handel operas I have seen lately have been in the proportions of satire and tragedy: sometimes, even usually, political treachery is manifested by comic characters, so intent on sprinting for the prize that they fail to notice the avenue of banana skins that they have to run up to get there, meeting their demise with brutal suddenness. Worldly ambition is a matter of the will, which means that those who have it deserve their gruesome end if they are vindictive schemers, which they nearly all are. Otherwise, they are magnanimous and tirelessly forbearing, as is shown by the broad and solemn arias which they are allotted in generous quantities.