By all accounts Handel had a sense of humour. So I'm sure he would have been tickled by this delightful Royal College of Music production (ending the London Handel Festival) that transfers the story of the butch, boar-hunting Princess Atalanta and her clandestine quest for a worthy suitor to a 21st-century seaside resort populated by stroppy adolescents texting each other while hanging morosely round a litter bin. This is possibly the first Handel production in which a football scarf plays a central role.

And I'm sure he would have loved the finale devised by the stage director Christopher Cowell, which has Atalanta reconciled with her lover, Meleagro (another royal slumming it in disguise), but then forced into a Hello!-style wedding hosted by a slimy TV celebrity. Not least because it cleverly mirrors the circumstances of the opera's composition. Required to write the entire piece in three weeks to celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales in 1736, Handel himself cobbled on a happy, nuptial ending - and turned a bloodthirsty Roman myth into a bland tale of lovers' misunderstandings.

Still, his music is exhilarating. The overture is practically a trumpet concerto; many arias have a ballad-opera charm (though there are a couple of corking coloratura showpieces); and there's a ravishing final duet that sounds as if it's the missing link between Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea and Strauss's Rosenkavalier.

To hear all this sung by students with light, still-forming voices but excellent intonation and musicality is no hardship. Perhaps more experienced singers would have injected more expression into the Act I arias, but by the big Act III numbers both Ruby Hughes's flutey, radiant Atalanta and Madeleine Pierard's incisive Meleagro had hit persuasive form. I was impressed, too, by Stephanie Lewis's Irene: a warm mezzo voice and an impersonation of a ghastly teenager that wouldn't have disgraced Catherine Tate.

Laurence Cummings and the London Handel Orchestra kept the music skimming joyously along. More shows tonight and tomorrow.

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