The Glimmerglass Opera of Cooperstown, New York, housed in a nine-hundred-seat opera house that is one of the finest facilities in which to see and hear operas in the United States, has in recent years served as a feeder for productions at the New York City Opera (most—if not all—wend southward to the New York State Theater)—where generally they look worse. The summer repertory is a mix of operas from the four centuries of the form’s history and includes out-of-the-way works as well as standards. The house is particularly suited to baroque opera, and the current Handel boom owes a good deal to productions at the Glimmerglass.

This year’s Handel, the early (1700) Agrippina, was—perhaps surprisingly—an audience favorite; its lively plot (the Nero theme) and youthfully brash music (Handel emerging full-grown from his cocoon), allied to a deftly updated staging by Lillian Groag and a strong cast under ...

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