Xerxes , Coliseum, London
Coliseum, London: Nicholas Hytner's Oliver award-winning 1985 production of Handel's Xerxes has aged well, if it's aged much at all. David Fielding's designs place the action in an 18th-century London pleasure garden, even making a feature of Roubiliac's famous statue of Handel for the Vauxhall Gardens. Objets and curios appear in display cases; the mountainous city of Persepolis is an exotic…