Freiburg Baroque Orchestra / Jacobs

Much-acclaimmed baroque officionado and period-instrument-ophile Rene Jacobs brought the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra to the Barbican last week for a concert performance of Handel's masterpiece of opera seria, Giulio Cesare. Well, it was billed as a concert performance, but wasn't it more of a semi-staged affair? That was rather the trouble; the singers on stage seemed caught in something of a dramatic no-man's-land, someone obviously wanted to capitalise on the fact that the cast had performed the work in a fully staged production in Germany the week before. It was a shame: a straight concert performance would have allowed the singers to concentrate on their vocal performances (which, in some cases, they could have done with). As it was, the half-baked acting drew only a few moments of effective dramatic realisation of the work, and a whole load of awkward, confused and repetitive gestures.

From the opening bars Jacobs flicked the so-called 'Freiburgers' into something like the brisk Handelian style we've come to know in recent years, but though his opening tempi were always exquisitely paced, it seemed he relied on the orchestra to maintain them; caught himself in the maelstrom confusion of his own beat (which in Acts 2 and 3 was supplied by a biro - beware the Barbican's interval baton-thief...). And why did Jacobs insist on conducting the recitatives? They could have flowed effortlessly in the hands of the FBO's continuo players and their appointed soloists, but instead they suffered from the enforced bureaucracy of a conductor and were lumbering and cumbersome.

Though this four-hour opera with limited brass and chorus can seem like a slog, there's no doubting that it contains some of the most sublime music Handel wrote. Many of the arias are themselves mini-masterpieces, none more so than Caesar's hunting aria - though Marijana Mijanovic in the title role didn't overwhelm with her grasp of Handel's musical language, she thankfully pulled this one off, just about (though if having period instrument horns play the obbligato procludes them from playing the right notes and with an even tone, there's something of a debate to be had...). Elsewhere Mijanovic seemed off-the-mark in terms of Handelian phrasing - her runs at worst demonstrating all the finesse of a baroque technique learnt on a correspondence course. And are those painful facial expressions really either necessary or acceptable? Mijanovic did, however, cut a suitably cold and oppresive Caesar; when she was performing, you knew who was in control, and it wasn't Rene Jacobs.

Performances from Malena Ernman as Sesto and Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo pleased more. They were vocally sensitive (qutie beautiful at times), and made the best of the confused scenario, cutting their dramatic exploits off at the limb the moment they became redundant. There were some beautiful offerings from solo string players in the orchestra - the cello continuo shone throughout - though wind solos were more dissapointing with some rather shoddy tuning. Tuning problems also contaminated some of the vocal performances - the creeping pitch of one of the FBO's harpsichords under the hot Barbican lights was noticeable and undoubtedly contributed.

Some performances can absorb rough edges because they achieve something that doesn't concern itself with detail. Not this one. Things just never seemed to come together, and the beauty of Handel's score dragged past as if viewed from the window of an uncomfortable train.

Andrew Mellor