English Touring Opera (ETO)

Venice, the birthplace of opera as we now know it, was a city of fabulous wealth, learning, trade and sensuality.

The most fantastic of all its ‘follies’, the marriage of poetry, music and art, is opera. The olivier Award-winning English Touring opera returns to Bath for its annual visit with two of the most entertaining works of all.

One of ETo’s most warm-hearted and humorous productions of recent years, Xerxes, sees Handel’s astonishing setting of a Venetian text relocated to the Battle of Britain, with the Persian king recast as a glamorous princeturned- pilot jealous of his brother’s stronger sex appeal.

The score is Handel at his best, sometimes fi ery and even explosive, at other times deeply touching. Julia Riley, Clint van der Linde, Laura Mitchell and Andrew Slater return in their original roles, with Peter Brathwaite and Galina Averina in her company debut, and Jonathan Peter Kenny directing the spitfi re brilliance of the old Street Band.

Revival, sung in English.