First performed in 1733, Deborah is among the earliest of Handel's English oratorios. Popular in his day, it has been neglected since, and scholars had questioned its originality on the grounds that Handel, an inveterate self-borrower, recycled too much previous material in composing the score. The argument ignores the extraordinary power the work generates in performance, as admirably proved by its revival at this year's London Handel festival.

A study of women in political and spiritual authority, the oratorio aimed at shoring up the regency of Caroline of Ansbach when her husband, George II, was away consolidating his power bases in Hanover. The prophet Deborah leads the Israelite resistance against a Canaanite army of occupation under the pagan general Sisera. Barak is the warrior she appoints as head of her troops, but she prophesies that it is to another woman, Jael, that Sisera will eventually fall.

The subtext extols the Protestant militancy of the Hanoverian dynasty, but Handel is too great a psychologist to be propagandist. Much has been made of the violent climax in which Jael dispatches Sisera by driving a tent peg into his skull as he sleeps; it is the exaltation with which she kills a defenceless man that is so disturbing here. At the work's centre, meanwhile, is a tremendous standoff between Deborah and Sisera that has some of the force and immensity of Greek tragedy.

Conducted with ferocious energy and commitment by Laurence Cummings, the performance was exceptional. Lynda Lee's Deborah, all fervour and ecstatic coloratura, contrasted sharply with the implacable hauteur of Owen Willetts's Sisera. Robin Blaze was the strikingly lyrical Barak, Katherine Watson the commanding, vocally athletic Jael. Playing and choral singing were both exemplary. The real revelation, though, was the work itself: it easily stands comparison with Handel's greatest, and deserves greater prominence in the repertoire.

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