George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724), Opera Seria in Three Acts
Libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym
Giulio Cesare – Christophe Dumaux (countertenor)
Cleopatra – Julie Fuchs (soprano)
Sesto – Cecilia Molinari (mezzo-soprano)
Cornelia – Teresa Iervolino (mezzo-soprano)
Tolomeo – Cameron Shahbazi (countertenor)
Le Concert d’Astrée/Emmanuelle Haïm
Calixto Bieito, stage director
rec. live, 25 January and 2 February 2023, Dutch National Opera and Ballet, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Naxos NBD0187V Blu-ray [191]

Giulio Cesare has everything a successful theatrical presentation might need: a coherent narrative and structure, good pacing and dramatic flow, and clear and psychologically plausible characterisation. To say that Handel capitalized on Nicola Francesco Haym’s clever libretto is of course an understatement, his musical and dramatic invention dazzling, the score crackling with energy for every one of its 190 minutes. With a plot concerned with the use and abuse of power and the ‘glorification of sexual passion’ in Winton Dean’s famous phrase, there is plenty for a visionary producer such as Calixto Bieito to work with to provide an interpretation with contemporary resonance. There’s no question that he did so in his 2023 Dutch National Opera production, now released by Naxos on Blu-ray, but the results are mixed.

Bieto’s is a modern dress production, but Rebecca Ringst’s set is wholly abstract. It consists of a huge glass and metal cube which can be rotated and tilted, the sides of which are also video screens. It’s a highly impressive technical achievement although sometimes both distracting and clearly challenging for the cast. High-tech capabilities aside, for the first half of the opera it seems most like a 2020s version of Peter Brook’s ‘Empty Space’. For the second half of the opera a beach setting is evoked, but it seems to provide no obvious crucial addition to Bieto’s conception of the characters or their motivation. Shorn deliberately of a clear sense of place, unlike David McVicar’s famous Glyndebourne production, Bieto’s version has to stand and fall on its dramatic imagination, realised principally through characterisation and changing interactions. He is never short of invention, but this can become problematic. There’s a concept behind every scene but as we move to the next it’s seemingly dropped in favour of a new thought. Half of me admired the rush of ideas whilst the other wanted more sense of narrative consistency. There is nevertheless a persistent intensity. For Bieto, Giulio Cesare becomes a moral story about the elite of the rich and powerful, their selfishness, callousness and violence. All of this is presented in an unflinching way with a deliberate coarseness. There’s no question there is a singular power to some of the scenes, but it can become unrelenting and the deliberate lack of any form of subtly is sometimes wearing.

All of the cast are bought into Bieto’s vision, none more so than Julie Fuchs as Cleopatra, who sings and acts with a magnetic brilliance, no physical challenge whilst singing seemingly too much for her. She manifests a superb sense of both haughtiness and not a little irony, and occasionally there is vulnerability hinted at too. She is also seemingly unfazed by the scene to scene challenges Bieto devises. Christophe Dumaux as Cesare seems a little less comfortable. So, for example, he manages to sing Cesare’s aria ‘Presti omai l’egizia terra’ quite well whilst walking around rather gingerly on top of the cube in a parachute harness, but there’s no projection of the disruptive force that is Cesare. We get some of that as the production develops, and throughout he is never less than adequate, but he doesn’t quite have that extra something in terms of stage presence or acting that Fuchs possesses. Cameron Shahbazi, on the other hand is utterly chilling as Tolomeo, the epitome of a psychopath and predator. His aria in Act III ‘Domerò la tua fierezza’, where his fiercely cruel words to Cleopatra are matched to physical violence, is simultaneously compelling and repellent, like something straight out of The Godfather. The rest of the singers are uniformly strong and the support they receive from Le Concert d’Astrée and Emmanuelle Haïm is absolutely outstanding. Haïm has an instinctive feel for pacing and Le Concert d’Astrée can turn on a sixpence to thrilling effect, alternately incisive and lyrical.

I’ve watched this production twice, having left a bit of time in between, because on a first viewing I found some of Bieto’s decisions bewildering. I warmed to it more the second time, even if some of the excesses are still irritating. Why, for example, let the closing Act 2 Arioso ‘Belle dee di questo core’ become a ludicrous parody of a homoerotic romp complete with profoundly unoriginal suggestive ice cream cones? What is the purpose of the absurd all cast display of shadow boxing during the first Act 3 Sinfonia? On the whole though I was never bored by what Bieto did and, my reservations above about coarseness and discontinuities aside, was always keen to see what came next. I’d add that so impressed was I by Haïm’s command of the score that I also tried the audio alone and it stood up really well, the recorded sound excellent and the stage noise never too intrusive.

But of course one never purchases a Blu-ray of a Calixto Bieito production in order to turn the pictures off. And I’m afraid my words will definitely be inadequate to convey the full, ahem, grandeur and definitely wit of the opera’s conclusion. Remember the famous ‘toilet scene’ in his 2002 ENO Ballo in maschera? Well, Bieito is definitely famous enough to be permitted to be occasionally self-referential I suppose, and so it is that in their final duet, Cleopatra and Cesare present each other with gift wrapped toilets made of gold. As if that is not enough, the final chorus sees the whole cast celebrating, all having acquired those wonderfully desirous objects. There is no limit to the excess of the rich it seems, and the scenes did also remind me of something in real life a few years ago to do with a generous offer of a loan from the Guggenheim Museum to a very important person, the details of which I can’t quite bring to the front of my mind just now unfortunately. Ah well.

Dominic Hartley

Other cast
Achilla – Frederik Bergman (bass-baritone)
Nireno – Jake Ingbar (countertenor)
Curio – Georgiy Derbas-Richter (baritone)

Production staff
Rebecca Ringst, set designer
Ingo Krügler, costume designer
Michael Bauer, lighting designer

Technical details
Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Audio language: Italian
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Dutch, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 191 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 50)

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