Ariodante, Barbican, London

What delicate thoroughbreds these Baroque musicians are. No fewer than three of the seven soloists in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées production of Handel's Ariodante fell by the wayside, and had to be replaced. But that's the downside to the fine-tuned art that this company, with its resident band Les Talens Lyriques, purveys.

This was a "concert" performance without a single prop: the female soloists were in ball gowns, the male soloists wore white-tie-and-tails, while the women playing male characters were encased in sharp black suits. Yet it made an intensely dramatic evening - much more dramatic, in fact, than many shows I've seen in opera houses.

It helped, of course, that the lead soprano should be the blazingly charismatic Danielle de Niese, typecast when she galvanised Glyndebourne as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, and here a bewitchingly alluring princess Ginevra. It also helped that most of the soloists had begun their careers as instrumentalists, their musicianship thus ensuring a proper symbiosis with this brilliant period band. But the main reason lay in the drama inherent in every bar of Handel's music, which conjured up the verdant meadows, royal gardens, stormy seas, and gloomy prisons that constitute the story's fictional Scottish landscape.

But the singers did their own conjuring, too, with vocal colour and gesture. De Niese's Ginevra turned the whole auditorium into her boudoir for her first entry: serenely confident of her charms, she cavorted like a sex kitten while filling the air with wonderfully assured coloratura flights. Meanwhile, Jaël Azzaretti made the perfect foil as her hopelessly love-lorn companion with a small but ravishingly pure sound. As the scheming Duke Polinesso, Vivica Genaux added her dark alto to the mix, which was then balanced by Caitlin Hulcup's light mezzo in the title role.

While Genaux came across like Shakespeare's Iago, Hulcup evinced noble masculinity: standing in for Angelika Kirchschlager, this young Australian cannot yet project her voice comfortably over an orchestra this size, but, with conductor Christophe Rousset holding back the volume, she held us all spellbound with her two great arias.

The final ingredient in this magical feast was the Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu, whose passionate presence - athletically hurling himself about the stage while delivering soaringly immaculate flights - drew passionate responses from the crowd. Who needs directors and designers?

MICHAEL CHURCH