Agrippina, Salle Pleyel; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, review Are two concerts of Handel's 1709 Agrippina, on consecutive nights, too much for Paris? René Jacob's four-hour version (), last Tuesday in the cavernous Salle Pleyel, with practically the same cast as his 2010 Berlin Staatsoper production (and subsequent 2011 recording), made a spectacular virtue of the format. The singers, dressed in what looked at first like normal evening dress, sang and acted on the bare stage they shared with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin performers, using their folding chairs, and sometimes the musicians themselves, as props. It says much for the quality of the performance - and of Cardinal Grimani's satirical libretto - that the lean, witty result seemed far more effective than the original full stage production, with its overdone bespangled Christian Lacroix costumes, whiteface makeup, and director Vincent Boussard's buffa excesses. Here, by simply swapping his dress shirt in the third act for an open-necked red silk one and a pair of Persol sunspecs, Emperor Claudius (the baritone Marcus Fink), casually barefooted in Tod's driving mocs, turned into a wavy-haired Roman Via Veneto beau, circa 1959. Intrigue? Plots? In ROME?" he protested, to general laughter, while his feckless son Nero (the alto Jennifer Rivera, conveying a perfect blend of sullenness and adolescent libidinousness in a smart white spencer, wide navy slacks and stilettoes), was being neatly brought to heel by Poppea (the crystalline-voiced petite Korean soprano Sunhae Im). Single accessory for their great duet: one 60p apple, which both ate - sometimes at the same time - while singing, to comic and sexually suggestive effect. Forget the cloying sentimentality of 19th-century opera; enjoyably, Agrippina is about backstabbing, influence-peddling, power, sex, blackmail, cross-dressing and double-deals, from which no hero rises. Grimani's cynical send-up of the powerful, as well as the easily led masses, or of fair weather courtier friends, is enthusiastically-served by the 24-year-old Handel with a stunning wealth of startlingly modern airs, trios, unencumbered by the da capi of later works. It feels almost unfair to single out stars, yet Alex Penda, the Serbian soprano was both regal and serpentine in the title role; while the American countertenor Bejun Mehta transfigured the play's patsy, Ottone into a Sebastian-like figure, with controlled pathos and grace. This was a tough act to follow: on Wednesday, at the elegant, acoustically perfect Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Eduardo López Banzo's severely cut, often metronomically speeded-up version (), clocking at 155 minutes, nonetheless felt longer. Having only rehearsed for two days, the poor singers could give little more than park-and-bark pieces, with their own, sometimes conflicting, readings of each character. The superb Ann Hallenberg produced a memorable, bravura performance in the title role; noteworthy were also Luigi de Donato as Claudius, María Espada as Poppea, and, in the second part, Vivica Genaux as Nerone. It wasn't enough to save the evening: to no-one's surprise, René Jacobs emerged the winner of the Great Paris Agrippina Handicap.