In September of 1966, the Metropolitan Opera opened its brand-new Lincoln Center home with the world premiere of samuel barber’s Antony and Cleopatra while New York City Opera, now its close neighbor across the plaza, simultaneously served up sly counter-programming with Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. As it turned out, despite acclaim for Leontyne Price’s Cleopatra, the Barber work flopped while the Handel was a surprise hit and her Egyptian queen made Beverly Sills an overnight sensation.
Nearly sixty years later—likely through sheer serendipity—Giulio Cesare is once again competing with Antony and Cleopatra, the latter this time a new work by John Adams that premieres at the Met today (May 12). Earlier this spring, however, Handel’s work turned up in two guises: a fully staged production by R.B. Schlather at Hudson Hall and a concert version by conductor Harry Bicket and The English Concert for their annual visit to Carnegie Hall. If neither proved entirely satisfying, both proved brave attempts to do justice to one of baroque opera’s most complex and challenging masterpieces.
Opera seria, the genre in which Handel worked, is rigidly constructed of solo da capo arias connected by recitatives with an occasional duet or trio tossed in. Giulio Cesare is by far the longest of the composer’s works, and its original 1724 version contains more than thirty solos, nearly all da capo arias in A-B-A’ form. The acclaimed René Jacobs recording from the early 1990s contains more than four hours of music, which means that most contemporary performances of Giulio Cesare will be abridged. The dilemma then becomes whether to omit an aria entirely or to include a partial version: neither of this spring’s editions solved it satisfactorily.
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Since it began its Carnegie series of Handel operas and oratorios, The English Concert has presented its offerings complete or only slightly cut. It was then a shock when, due to time restrictions imposed by the venue, Cesare lost nine numbers. Those omissions seriously unbalanced the carefully wrought libretto of Nicola Haym, which intertwines the love story of Caesar and Cleopatra with the trials and tribulations of Pompey’s widow Cornelia and son Sesto. The latter lost two of his five arias while Achilla, one of Cornelia’s aggressive suitors, was permitted just one of his three.
The excisions in the Hudson Hall staging (which lasted just three hours, including a single intermission) were even more drastic: not only were complete arias omitted, but a good number of the remaining ones were reduced by two-thirds to just their initial A section. Given Schlather’s infectious enthusiasm for Handel opera—Cesare is the second in a series presented in Hudson, a scenic town two hours north of New York City, after he previously directed Alcina and Orlando in Manhattan—it’s puzzling that he abridges the works he mounts so severely.
But his strength as a director was in eliciting thrilling, risk-taking performances from his collaborators. He ignored Hudson Hall’s proscenium and placed in front of it his simple set of two towering black walls angled together. There in Terese Waddon’s contemporary costumes and Masha Tsimring’s haunting chiaroscuro lighting, the singers threw themselves into Handel and Haym’s characters with both dramatic intensity and musical flair. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the show was Ruckus, a lively, small, conductor-less, period-instrument ensemble which liberally rejiggered the accompaniment, adding percussion and other sounds that Handel would not have recognized. But, to my ears, their pizzazz and enviably close collaboration with the singers added rather than detracted from the experience.
Randall Scotting’s commandingly forthright countertenor Cesare began a bit uncertainly with heavily aspirated coloratura. Soon, though, his colorful singing settled down—particularly as his ardor for Cleopatra grew. The queen’s protean fascination is amply conveyed by vivaciously dazzling Song Hee Lee, who had late last year demonstrated her Handelian credentials with William Christie at Juilliard.
Tolomeo, her brother, is often played as an epicene fop, and though at first it seemed Chuanyuan Liu was headed in that direction, he gradually evolved into a genuinely frightening monster in a red suit. His predation toward Cornelia was less convincing than that of Douglas Ray Williams’s slimy Achilla, but their evil advances brought out the noble fire in Meridian Prall’s urgent, richly sung Cornelia. But the revelation of the afternoon was young soprano Raha Mirzadegan as the traumatized, then vengeful Sesto. Though she put across her angry arias well, her achingly beautiful “Cara Speme” was the opera’s highlight.
The English Concert’s somewhat staid, brightly lit Cesare couldn’t help but be tamer, though it was still the most dramatically vital performance yet from the group. In the past, nearly all the performers sang from scores behind music stands; however, everyone in Cesare performed from memory and interacted in front of the orchestra. No stage director was indicated, which might explain why far too many entrances and exits lessened the tension. However, the singers gamely pushed this Cesare beyond the ordinarily bland concert opera concept.
Though he sang with almost insouciant ease, French countertenor Christophe Dumaux was almost too easy-going as he traversed Cesare’s dire vicissitudes. However, his casual delight (and ours) in duetting first with hornist Ursula Paludan Monberg in “Va tacito” and then violinist Nadja Zweiner in “Se in fiorito” distracted from the opera’s forward motion. His suavely beleaguered emperor contrasted markedly with the hyperactive Cleopatra of Louise Alder, who made sure every one of her character’s myriad moods was clearly indicated. Her cool and clear, if charmless, singing was always neatly accomplished, but she failed overall to bring her complex character to life.
Paula Murrihy dispatched Sesto’s arias with aplomb but remained a bit anonymous, particularly next to her grieving mother, played with riveting élan by rising Scottish contralto Beth Taylor, who alone got to keep all of her music, including her oft-cut happy aria near the end. The sumptuous Taylor and eager Murrihy collaborated movingly in the ravishingly painful duet of parting that ends the first act. Bicket took it very slowly and encouraged his singers to dig into the exquisite dissonances that crown the piece.
Though he had little to do, as Curio Thomas Chenhall stood out for his lushly round baritone while Morgan Pearse did what he could with the little that was left of Achilla’s music. American countertenor John Holiday, finally released from his tiny roles in new operas at the Met—Eurydice and The Hours, bit voraciously into Tolomeo’s fiery arias but didn’t convince that its brutal histrionics really showed him at his best. Perhaps he might have been better cast as Sesto.
Bicket’s musicians played with their expected precision and lush polish, but his always sensible tempi lacked the passionate drive that the younger and meaner Ruckus brought to the music drama.
The back of each Ruckus musician’s t-shirt boldly proclaimed that Hudson Hall offers the “Best News in a While for the NY Opera Scene”! If Schlather’s Giulio Cesare didn’t entirely live up to that extravagant claim, it did make one eager to attend what’s up next: Deidamia, Handel’s rarely-performed final opera. In March of 2026, The English Concert returns for Handel’s very secular oratorio Hercules with Swedish mezzo Ann Hallenberg as the fatally jealous Dejanira, one of her very best roles.
