Handel: Agrippina

OPERA
TUESDAY & SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25 & 29, 2020 (continuing through MARCH 7)
7:30 PM TUESDAY
1:00 PM SATURDAY

Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$30-$460
https://www.metopera.org/season/2019-20-season/agrippina/

Imagine a prequel to L'Incoronazione di Poppea, played for laughs, focusing on Nero's mother — and chockfull of some of the catchiest music that catchiest of composers, Handel, ever wrote.  Wait, you don't have to imagine it:  it's here.   I can't think of anyone you'd rather hear perform the juicy, camped-up title role than Joyce DiDonato.  This is the kind of thing — not regie (this is stupid conservative mainstream New York, for God's sake), but thoughtful and entertaining treatments of the material at hand — the Met should be doing all the time.  But isn't.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Hope that P.J. Clarke's stays open as late as it claims to.