Rodelinda, Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

A highlight of the London Handel Festival’s annual season is the opera, generally chosen from one of the dustier, more spidery corners of the composer’s repertoire. What a surprise then to see Rodelinda taking its turn this year. An undisputed classic, it’s also the opera that played perhaps the biggest part in reviving Handel’s fortunes on the stage in the 20th century. With aria after aria of generous and dramatic vocal writing and plenty of crowd-pleasing numbers, it’s also a natural showcase for the young singers of the Royal College of Music – perhaps the only ones having more fun than their audience last night.

A tale of usurpation, rivalry and dynastic intrigue, Rodelinda sits alongside the likes of Orlando and Alcina at the rather more intense end of Handel’s opera seria canon. With no magic or light-hearted subplots and barely any disguises, it’s a work that lends itself to modern adaptation, offering the composer’s most sincere and plausible canvas for contemporary emotion.

While preserving the original warring city states of Milan and Pavia, the visual aesthetic of David Fielding’s production is straight out of the Eastern Bloc, all camouflage-clad military leaders, corrugated iron bunkers and women in fur coats smoking too many cigarettes. Violence here is both casual and natural, lending credibility to the more melodramatic twists of Corneille’s plot.

It all makes for a rather elegant transposition, with only the libretto lagging behind in the 18th century. The final barrier to psychological realism, it’s almost impossible to watch these terribly serious characters stop in their murderous steps and sing a charming little metaphorical ballad about a shepherd, a babbling brook or a gentle breeze, without it becoming inadvertently and exceedingly funny. There are various remedies to this, tongue-in-cheek camp chief among them, but I’m not sure that Fielding’s straight-faced solution of tempering each wistful shepherd with wanton destruction of furniture or brandishing of weaponry quite came off.

Emotional sincerity, however, was something we had in excess: the swaggering attack of the London Handel Orchestra’s Overture under the direction of Laurence Cummings; the plaintive obbligato flute solo in “Ombre, piante”; the impassioned grief of Eleonor Dennis’s Rodelinda. Rather stiff in last year’s Il Pastor Fido (though vocally strong), Dennis has matured into her stage presence, delivering a performance of serious vocal class that set the curve for her colleagues. Dispatching the likes of “Mio caro bene” and “Se’l mio duol” with emotive skill and silken tone, it was in the punchier coloratura of  “L’empio rigor” and the glorious “Morrai, si” that she really showed her quality and new-found control.

Rosie Aldridge, another familiar face to LHF audiences, returned as the feisty Eduige. If at times I could have done with just a little more front to her vocal attack (particularly for the colourful “Lo faro”) it would be hard to fault her technique; hers is one of the most attractive young mezzo voices currently making its way through the ranks.

With women this strong it would have been lovely to hear the men match them, but last night it just wasn’t to be. David Well’s Grimoaldo was something of a technical misfire, with coloratura coming in and out of focus and a bit too much Puccini about the top notes for authenticity. More solid but scarcely more exciting was Samuel Evans’s henchman Garibaldo, leaving the honours to be split between Rupert Enicknap’s Unulfo (pictured above) - who was unsettled by an awkwardly rushed tempo for “Fra tempeste” but whose projected tone and musicality produced some of the best recitative of the evening - and Ben Williamson’s Bertarido (pictured top). Smooth and evenly produced throughout his (considerable) range, Williamson’s voice is an impressive one. As yet, however, it is more reliably beautiful than expressive, failing until Act III to bring anything like the necessary conviction to the (admittedly rather wet) figure of Bertarido.

Saving a twist of the knife for the final unsettling moments of the lieto fine, Fielding manages to make painful sense of one of Handel’s more awkward operatic resolutions. It’s a production that deserves another outing, and with voices of such promise and an orchestra of such quality, it's one that has got me not a little impatient for the arrival of Glyndebourne’s new Rinaldo later this year.

• Rodelinda is at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, until 17 March
• Find Rodelinda on Amazon