Giulio Cesare from Glyndebourne

Conductor William Christie
Director David McVicar

Giulio Cesare - Sarah Connolly, mezzo
Curio - Alexander Ashworth
Cornelia, Pompei's wife - Patricia Bardon
Sesto, Pompei's son - Angelika Kirchschlager, mezzo
Cleopatra - Danielle de Niese, soprano
Nireno - Rachid Ben Abdeslam, countertenor
Tolomeo, Cleopatra's brother - Christophe Dumaux, countertenor.
Achilla - Christopher Maltman, baritone

This performance of Handel's Giulio Cesare took place at Glyndebourne in 2005.  This is the David McVicar version that ran at the Met with David Daniels and Natalie Dessay in 2013.  I called it Julius Caesar the Musical.  I enjoy remembering that Natalie was ill for one of the performances, and Danielle de Niese was in town.  Naturally she took advantage of the opportunity and stood in for Natalie.  That would have been fun to see.

We are projected in time into the British Empire.  The Egyptian servants wear the Fez, and the Roman Army are dressed in the red uniforms of the British Army.  There is no evidence of Islam, I guess.  Cleopatra looks like a modern woman.  There are WWII ships and dirigibles.
In the real time of Julius Caesar the rulers of Egypt were descendants of one of the generals of Alexander the Great but still called themselves Pharoahs.  This is the original and in my opinion is better than the Met version.

I think I prefer this cast.  They are sincere in their change from Roman to British empire.  Angelika Kirchschlager is maybe the best trouser singer I have ever experienced.  It's worth it to see her alone. 
I'm never really wild about countertenors, so I am happy to see that Giulio Cesare is sung by the great Dame Sarah Connolly.  She even sort of looks like Caesar and carries herself like a great general.  This is Danielle de Niese's first big success, indeed this is her masterpiece.  She sings, she dances, she brings us joy.

I notice that the two dead guys, Tolomeo and Achilla, come back to life.  I also noticed this in Cecilia Bartoli's version.  The characters must have singing in the finale.  Here it is staged, but we're not sure what it should mean.

I loved it.  It runs for a little longer from Glyndebourne, so try to see it.

Giulio Cesare alla PS

Forgive me.  I approach everything from the perspective of obsession and am watching Peter Sellars' take on Handel's Giulio Cesare from 1993.  There is no indication of a live audience.  Jeffrey Gall is Caesar, my fourth countertenor experience in this role.  He has a brighter sound than Scholl, Daniels or Fagioli.  His coloratura is impressive.  One of the firsts for me here is Lorraine Hunt en travisti as Sesto.  I would not have gone in quest of Peter Sellars if it weren't for the hidden treasures of Lorraine.  This is filmed somewhere in Europe.


Tolomeo, Cleopatra's brother, is sung by Drew Minter, Cleopatra is Susan Larson and Cornelia is Mary Westbrook-Geha.  My point of departure for the role of Cleopatra is Cecilia Bartoli, and Susan Larson sounds nothing like her.  I don't know how much of this I can watch.

I am mentally reviewing the versions of this opera that I have seen and can only conclude that it is regarded as a comedy.  In Zurich the Egyptians wear striped boxers.  In Salzburg Cleopatra rides a rocket.  At the Met we have wandered into a Bollywood movie.  It's hard to take any of these seriously.

This one is also not serious.  Caesar is president of the United States, apparently, due to seal of the President on the podium.  Tolomeo most resembles a punk teenager.  We have begun to notice that Peter Sellars' version of Regietheater moves every opera to somewhere American.  This is what he knows, so this is what he does.  The first person who appears representing Tolomeo and delivering Pompey's head is dressed a bit like Fidel Castro.  This at least is serious.

Caesar and Ptolemy are negotiating, and after a while Caesar starts throwing cups and felt tipped markers at Ptolemy.  Caesar has a lot more pens in his pockets and he throws them.  Then he opens the water bottles, spills water all around, and exits smiling.  He's always smiling.  Sellars seems to have anticipated our current administration.

By now I am used to the musical quality of the Bartoli GC.  Perhaps I am spoiled forever.

In Act II both Ptolemy and Achilla are harassing Cornelia.  They are laying it on pretty heavy.  So far she just frowns.  Ptolemy wraps her in a garden hose.  Sesto plans to accompany his mother into Ptolemy's harem where he can exact his revenge.  I am watching this for curiosity.  It isn't redeeming itself.  Only Lorraine is outstanding.  She waves her machine gun around menacingly.

They go with comedy all the way to the end.
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Giulio Cesare

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I watched the live stream of Handel's Giulio Cesare from Salzburg in Cecilia Bartoli's inaugural season as artistic director of the Whitsun Festival in 2012.  The production was enormously distracting, so much so that I wrote mostly about it.  There were crocodiles, a Rolls Royce, deals over oil wells, a fan dance, etc.  And occasional obscene gestures.

What I noticed less of was the incredibly gorgeous singing, especially by Cecilia Bartoli, Andreas Scholl, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Philippe Jaroussky, with Giovanni Antonini conducting.  Jaroussky is at his most beautiful, and his duet with Anne Sofie von Otter is emotional. 

In the past year the stream has become a DVD, and in the last month this DVD has received a Grammy nomination for best opera recording.  Does that happen?  I notice that of this year's 5 nominees, Król Roger and Giulio Cesare are DVDs. 

This is the standard for modern Baroque performance.

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Julius Caesar, the Musical

There is so much to write about Handel's Giulio Cesare simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera.  Let's start with this head which appears broken in the production.  We're clear that this is Pompey the Great, right?  Not Julius Caesar who looked more like this.

 

Everyone calls the production Bollywood, a genre I'm not particularly familiar with. 
This opera staging has nothing to do with Rome and everything to do with the British Empire in Egypt.  It is much easier to distinguish the two ethnic groups, Europeans and Egyptians, than other productions of the opera I've seen.  When the Egyptians woo Cornelia (Patricia Barton), she is convincingly repulsed by them.  The British appear often in their red and khaki uniforms.  Julius Caesar wears a long, calf length coat.  The Egyptian serving men wear the fez, a red cap that does not fall off when they bow.  Ptolemy and Cleopatra are constantly changing their clothing throughout the opera.  Renée Fleming even interviewed the dressers.

Conductor:  Harry Bicket
Production:  David McVicar

Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar):  David Daniels
Cleopatra:  Natalie Dessay
Cornelia:  Patricia Bardon
Sesto (Sextus):  Alice Coote
Tolomeo (Ptolemy):  Christophe Dumaux

Natalie Dessay is a fine dancer as well as a wonderful singing actress.  I may have imagined it, but didn't she leave out "Tutto puo donna vezzosa?"  If you search carefully, you can find a film of Natalie singing it with one bare breast.  My mind may have wandered, but I was specifically looking for it.  I went out in the first act, so perhaps it came then.  My favorite staging in this style was definitely "Da tempeste."  Enormous fun.  This production is very entertaining, but the emphasis on dancing may limit the enjoyment of the singing.

I'm going to have to get a score of this.  There was a lot more recitative in this one than in Cecilia's version.

Now I must discuss David Daniels.  He has such a reputation that it has simply made me curious.   Now I know why.  I have never heard a countertenor with so much emotional range.  He dominates the role of Julius Caesar in a way that the others I have heard do not even approach.  It is extremely exciting and definitely moves the opera to center on the title character.  Bravo.

Harry Bicket conducted and played the recitatives.  He praised the Met orchestra for their growth in the performance of Baroque repertoire.

Giulio Cesare is unquestionably the greatest of all the Baroque operas, for the marvelous and varied character of the Queen of Egypt, for the rapid movement from serious to comedy and back again, for the gorgeous arias, for the opportunities it gives to great singers of each passing generation.



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Giulio Cesare from Salzburg

Giulio Cesare:  Andreas Scholl, countertenor
Cleopatra:  Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano
Cornelia:  Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
Sesto:  Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor
Tolomeo:  Christophe Dumaux, countertenor
Nireno:  Jochen Kowalski, countertenor
Achilla:  Ruben Drole, bass
Curio:  Peter Kálmán, bass

Conductor:  Giovanni Antonini,  l'Orchestre Il Giardino Armonico
Regisseur: Olivier Simonnet
Production: Moshe Leiser et Patrice Caurier

While watching Giulio Cesare stream from Salzburg, I took notes.

The production is in modern dress, soldiers with helmets and rifles dancing.  There is fire on the stage.  The stage is full of lizards and oil wells.  The chorus is not much.

Scholl as Caesar in a medium blue suit steps out of a limousine with a statue of himself lying on the roof.  The statue is taken off and placed on the stage.  To the victor belong the spoils.  He wears the Roman victory laurel, but quickly takes it off.  He sits down and reads the newspapers while singing about victory.

Von Otter and Jaroussky, Pompey's family, appear in time to see Pompey's head delivered in a blue box with a green ribbon.  Caesar doesn't know what's in the box and opens it in front of the family.

Caesar goes back to the car to get his gun and sings through the window.  Now he is mad as hell.  Jaroussky is dressed as a kid.  I completely do not buy the head left lying on the floor.  They would have done something with it.  Cornelia is in despair and puts her head in a lizard's mouth.  Sesto is pissed and sees a ghost of Dad.  He at least acknowledges the head on the floor.

Cecilia Bartoli is the Intendant of this festival and has made sure she gets plenty of costumes for this opera.  No more operas where she spends the whole night in her night gown or a black dress.  In her first entrance she is wearing boots and a leopard trench coat.  Cute.  She dances around the statue of Caesar.  There are obscene gestures.  This part of the opera is all about having fun.

Her brother Tolomeo throws the statue of Caesar on the floor and kicks it.  He tears it up and pulls out its insides.  For some unknown reason it has insides.  He makes the head of Pompey and the head of Caesar kiss.  He is a bum with tattoos, corn rows and long hair.  I am booing.  So is the audience.

Caesar comes out and lights an oil drum.  He takes Pompey's head and puts it in the burning drum.  At least he treats it with some respect.

You have guessed by now that this is serious Eurotrash.  If it weren't for streaming we wouldn't get to see this sort of thing in America.  Philistine that I am, I am enjoying it.

Cleopatra is disguised as Lydia, but as usual, the eyes give her away.  She wears a wig that looks like pictures from Maria.

Except sometimes she doesn't.  My dear, you are wasting all these charms on me.  I already love you.  This production is pretty smutty.  However, there is absolutely no problem following the plot.  It's theatrically quite viable.

Sesto is planning his revenge, puts soot on his face.  Cleopatra as Lydia offers to help.

Caesar and Tolomeo meet over drinks.  Caesar pours his drink into the flowers, and they immediately wilt.  Papers are signed over oil wells, smiles and handshakes are photographed, and Caesar goes off in his limousine.

The Act ends with von Otter and Jaroussky singing an incredibly gorgeous “Son nata a lagrimar” duet.

Act II begins with the seduction scene.  Caesar puts on 3D glasses to watch the show.

Cleopatra is sitting on a rocket wearing a blond, frizzy wig, sun glasses, black gloves and a camouflage trench coat.  She takes off the coat to show black boots and gray feathers.  More giant Sally Rand style feathers appear, held up by men.  If I'm the star, I get costumes, dammit.  And half naked men to hold my feathers.  She sings "V'adoro pupille" and then sails off on the rocket.  You knew that.  Big cheers.

Caesar is sunk.

I'm not sure why, but I like Eurotrash for Handel.

Tolomeo is still trying to seduce Cornelia who tries to pour gasoline over herself and set herself on fire.  Sesto stops her.  He sings about snakes in front of a film of snakes. Jaroussky brings a masculine energy to the role of Sesto that a woman could not.  He shoots the snake while singing insane coloratura.

Everyone warns Caesar that Tolomeo is coming, but he slowly puts on his shoes and explains he has no fear.  Cleopatra wears a gold robe in this scene.  Caesar flees but takes his time.

Cleopatra picks up a machine gun and waves it around.  She wants the gods to protect Caesar.  This aria “Se pietà” is a prayer with dancing soldiers.  In the audience is a shouter.  This time he says, "Gigante!"  It was amazing.

Tolomeo is reading Playboy and ogling the centerfold.  Caesar jumps into the sea, and Cleopatra leads the Romans against Tolomeo.

Sesto fails again to kill Tolomeo, and to end the act Cornelia and Sesto strap a bomb around his waist so he can become a suicide bomber.

At the beginning of Act III Achilla is shot.  Tolomeo captures Cleopatra and makes her kneel and put a bag over her head.  She thinks all is lost.  Cecilia Bartoli sings the entire aria "Piangero," brilliantly, kneeling on the floor with a bag over her head.



Caesar can swim and comes up out of the sea.  He lies down on the floor amid a group of dying soldiers.  Caesar takes the bomb off of Sesto.

Caesar rescues Cleopatra just in time for "Da tempeste."  She is happy and dances around an oil well.  Curio gives her a note and some money.  She counts it and gives him some. A piano comes out, and Cleopatra finishes the aria decorating the stage with strings of lights.

Tolomeo and Cornelia come out.  She pulls a gun on him, but Sesto arrives and stabs Tolomeo with his bayonet.

The winners come back, surround the piano and smoke a little pot.  Where do I get a picture of Cecilia inhaling?  She's wearing a gold lame dress in this scene.  She has her wig again.

Scholl and Bartoli sing a wonderful love duet while rolling around on the floor.  No longer dead, Tolomeo joins the finale.  At the end a real tank appears in the alley behind the stage.

Much shouting.

Question:  if you could do anything you wanted, would it be this?

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P.S.

I want to do a musical review of Giulio Cesare based on the stream.

This was my third experience of Cecilia Bartoli's Cleopatra -- first a staged version at the Zurich Opera with Marc Minkowski conducting and La Scintilla playing, then a concert version in Paris with William Christie conducting, and this staged third version from Salzburg with Giovanni Antonini and his orchestra Il Giardino Armonico.  It is interesting to explore the subtle differences.

All three were long versions with little or no cuts.  Minkowski and Christie seemed to try to compensate for this by rushing through everything.

The performance in Zurich was odd.  Minkowski is a dynamic but idiosyncratic conductor who brought out some odd features, like performing most of the repeats sotto voce.  La Scintilla was out of tune and not in good form.  They made the mistake of putting a horn player on the stage where he proceeded to bloop every third note.  I suspect these problems have prevented this performance from being released on DVD.  Cecilia was very physically dynamic and intense throughout.  There are some poor quality recordings of bits of this on YouTube, and I notice mainly the quick tempos.

In Paris I was handicapped by sitting behind the performers.  A concert performance can be nice, but you only get the full effect of an opera when it's staged.  There was a kind of sameness to the different numbers.  This is the most common thing that happens in a performance and is probably the strongest indication that the maestro is present.  What is wished for is complete individuality.  Is this too hard to understand?

Of live performances I have seen, this opera remains my personal favorite for Cecilia Bartoli.  It would have been very hard for me to miss the Salzburg performance.  Thanks to the modern device of live streaming, I had a front row seat.

We may carp over the staging of this opera, especially the raunchy bits, but musically it was an absolute triumph.  Somewhere in an interview Cecilia said that all the participants were on the same page musically--not a direct quote.  I can't remember the precise words.  It was that rarest of musical events--the true ensemble performance.

My personal favorite is Cecilia's performance of "Tutto puo donna," a beautiful woman can accomplish anything.  She, of course, is the living embodiment of these words.  Her style of delivering this aria is her own unique creation.  Let's face it, anything she sings is her own unique creation.  This above all else is what makes her her.  Her voice is at its most gorgeous now.

But that same kind of thoughtful personal expression was everywhere, whether nasty, tragic, sexy, triumphant, or frightened, each achieved a personal individuality from all the artists present that combined and blended into great beauty.  Perhaps the collective soul of music soars higher than the individual ego.

I always feel about Giovanni Antonini and his orchestra Il Giardino Armonico that they embody a similar kind of collective enthusiasm that spreads out to include everyone in sight.  Handel was never this wonderful.

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Giulio Cesare in Paris

Interior of Salle Pleyel from my seat.

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The performance of Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Salle Pleyel in Paris has to be the greatest assemblage of countertenors ever: Andreas Scholl as Cesare, Philippe Jaroussky as Sesto, Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo and Rachid Ben Abdesiam as Nerino. Scholl is German, but the other three seem to be trained in France. Who knew that France was a hotbed of countertenors?

Jaroussky is the star of the younger generation. Based on his performance here, I would say he is very exciting and has a pleasing color to his voice.

William Christie is a dynamic and exciting conductor who kept this insane, seemingly uncut presentation of the Handel opera moving as fast as imaginable. The pacing could not be criticized, but nevertheless the performance ran a half hour over the announced 4 hours. A seven o'clock start would have been nice.

I would have preferred to see and hear Cecilia from the front instead of the behind the orchestra seat I was given. I can still remember how it looked in the staging in Zurich. The whole concert was very enjoyable, very professionally done, especially the early instrument orchestra. Cecilia was especially beautiful in "piangero" and "da tempeste."



William Christie is left, then Scholl, then Cecilia Bartoli. I didn't notice at the concert, but the men all seem to be wearing white tie and tails. This is the only view I got of their faces. Now that I know to look for it, I see the blue ribbon below Cecilia's right hand.  This is the l'ordre du Mérite which she received at intermission.

Julius Caesar

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It was a long evening at the Zurich Opera. The opera started at 7:00 and I got back to the hotel around midnight. But despite this, it didn't seem long at all. It helped the flow of the drama to leave everything in. In this arrangement Sesto and his mother Cornelia become major characters in the drama and motivate the scene where Sesto kills Tolomeo to avenge his father Pompey.

Caesar arrives in Egypt quite by accident. He has tracked Pompey down to this spot and defeated him. The Roman army arrive on troop carriers looking like Carabinieri in their white Africa Corps uniforms, equipped with rockets and machine guns. They are easily distinguishable from the Egyptians in their blue and white striped outfits. There is a cute bit in the third act where Tolomeo in his harem takes off his blue and white striped trousers to reveal blue and white striped shorts underneath. Ha ha.

There was another green look in the Egyptian costumes, too, which was the color Cleopatra generally appeared in.

Cleopatra and Tolomeo are vying for Caesar's attention. Tolomeo tries sending Caesar Pompey's head in a box. Cleopatra tries sex. We know which one wins. In one of the arias Cleopatra proclaims "Tutto" (I can generally read the German supertitles--nowhere is free of them these days--but usually can't quite make it to the end) "A beautiful woman can accomplish anything." and proceeds to prove it.

In short, they accomplished the impossible: they made Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto dramatically interesting. Bravo. It all worked extremely well for me. Central to the drama is Cecilia Bartoli as Cleopatra. My only criticism here is that her costumes and manner varied so much that it resulted in no overall characterization. One minute she's a servant girl, the next she's the queen on a throne with a wonderful Madusa-like hat, then she's in rags. We know that Cleopatra was a woman of infinite variety, but maybe this is overdoing it a bit.

It flowed musically as well. Marc Minkowski, the conductor, paced everything wonderfully well. There was one oddity: the da capo sections of the arias were often sung very softly, so softly that you could hardly hear them. I don't think this is a traditional performance practice, I am only aware of the practice of increased ornamentation in the da capo sections, so it must have been the conductor's idea.

Cecilia was fabulous, especially in the third act. "Piangero" was wonderful. She is in her prime and this is a perfect role for her.

While I was listening to Caesar's rage aria toward the end, the thought passed my mind -- what if this actually sounded the way it was intended to sound, not like Marilyn Horne however fabulously she may have sung, not like a falsetto man, but like something unimaginable, a male soprano? The only explanation for the existence of castrati that I can think of is that it must have sounded truly spectacular.

Our countertenors did the best they could. They managed not to be too annoying. Franco Fagioli as Giulio Cesare slips out of his falsetto on the low notes, but is otherwise excellent in this Fach. He is tall and heroic looking, and amazingly, does not wear a beard. He could work on his heroic bearing.

Other people worth mentioning are Anna Bonitatibus, a small woman with a penetrating voice in the role of Sesto, and Charlotte Hellekant as Cornelia.

I am writing in internet points around Europe, and it's taking a while to finish this. Today I am in Florence. This is starting to sound too much like regular reviewing.