By Edward Seckerson [Independent, 24 May 2006]

Handel plots are bewilderingly similar. Love changes everything. Rivalry brings deceitful disguises, mistaken identities and scorn - so much scorn. Tolomeo has more than its fair share. Cleopatra sits on the throne of Egypt. Her usurped son Tolomeo has fled to Cyprus where he lives in obscurity. As the curtain rises, a shipwreck deposits the other protagonists on the island - including his wife Seleuce.