Huge questions have been asked of late about Handel's sexuality, and some have cited the ambiguities in Clori, Tirsi e Fileno as proof that he was gay. First performed in Rome in 1707, the cantata, a piece of wittily erotic pastoral, deals with the shepherdess Clori, who, we discover, is happily playing her lovers Tirsi and Fileno off against each other. When they find out what she's been up to, she leaves them both for pastures new. Tirsi and Fileno, meanwhile, are soon thinking they might be better off with each other.

How much this actually says about Handel's orientation is unclear, though it does reveal his awareness that sexuality is too fluid to be constrained along normative social lines. Clori's music, richly scored with sinuous woodwind in parallel thirds, hints at levels of sexual openness, centredness and security, with which Tirsi and Fileno, both hankering after fidelity, are unable to cope. Their responses are sharply differentiated. Tirsi, very much the idealistic optimist, throws coloratura tantrums when disappointed. Fileno, the more passionately insistent of the two, collapses into grief that carries with it a whiff of self-pity.

Clori, Tirsi e Fileno was never intended for the theatre, though it has been staged, most notably by the Covent Garden festival at Heaven, the gay disco in Charing Cross, a few years ago. The Early Opera Company, meanwhile, has opted for a concert performance, conducted with sensual charm by Christian Curnyn and wonderfully sung throughout. Claire Booth's Clori was all smoky-toned sleekness, capturing just the right amount of manipulative knowingness. Handel wrote the roles of the two men for castrati: here we had soprano Mhairi Lawson as Tirsi, flinging out her music with joyous dexterity, opposite the fabulous contralto Hilary Summers as Fileno. A refined, sexy entertainment, every second of it.