Handel's oratorio based on the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocrypha is rarely performed, and its appearance as the first in a series of Barbican events celebrating the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants was particularly welcome. If the group and its director William Christie originally established themselves with revivals of long-forgotten scores by masters of French Baroque, their way with Handel has become equally persuasive. Lightly delivered under Christie's neat and understated management, his orchestral writing had a clarity of definition that demonstrated how pertinently it underlines the piece's dramatic intentions.

The story is simple. While her husband Joacim is away, Susanna bathes in a stream where two lustful Elders have conceived a plan to "rush upon the fair, and force her to bliss". They falsely accuse of her adultery after she rejects their advances, and only the intervention of the young prophet Daniel, who points out their inconsistencies in their accounts, saves her from execution.

The two Elders – one a cowardly hypocrite, the other bluff and aggressive – were strikingly sketched in by William Burden and Alan Ewing. Sophie Karthäuser gave Susanna's heroic chastity vision and nobility, with Max Emanuel Cencic immaculately graceful as her husband, in a relationship Handel presents as ideally loving. If David DQ Lee's Daniel was a touch over-theatrical, it was part and parcel of a performance in which all the participants, including the chorus, sang by heart while acting out an effective semi-staging.