David McVicar’s vaudeville, Giulio Cesare, was telecast in HD on April 27, 2013. The show featured goose-stepping Scottish troopers led by a man in a kilt, cardboard waves rollicking in the background, cutout ships of various periods, the Keystone Cops, Gay Pride, the Daughter of the Regiment, Texas Guinan, Yodel King, a king in a brassiere, the Charleston Q’Tease, Clara Bow, loose order marching drills, three men singing falsetto, more cuteness than 7 yellow lab puppies with bows on their ears, more da capo arias than the Mafia has capos,  the resurrection of the dead, and incidentally some music by Handel in which the production obviously had little faith hence all the directorial sequins. The audience seemed to like the show, though I’d wager that if you’d taken Handel’s music away and substituted that of Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer almost none of them would have noticed. Looking around on the web I saw that some reviewers found some deep significance in McVicar’s shenanigans, but superannuated, ignorant, uninformed, unenlightened, ossified, undeconstructed ignoramus, and cultural reactionary that I am, I saw nothing more than what I’d seen as a kid at the burlesque shows at the old Hudson Theater in Union City, New Jersey; well, the Met’s sets were a little spiffier. In the Lubbock movie theater where I watched the performance there were a lot of snoozing seniors. This tendency to semi-coma was exacerbated by the opera’s length. I won’t mention you know who; but that’s the appropriate standard. Dessay CleopatraSo aside from the Camptown races how was the opera? Well, there were several. There was the opera Natalie Dessay was in when she doing Donizetti rather than Handel. Then in a leap of faith she went from flapper to ‘Che sento; Se pieta di me non senti’. She did the famous number very well, though the trills were fudged. If you grew up with Beverly Sills reading of the piece you were inevitably disappointed. (Sills – Che sento; Se pieta di me non senti) It’s hard to imagine Dessay, now an aging gamin, as the seductress Cleopatra. Comedy she does very well, passion and loss less well. Similarly, she did well by McVicar, but not Handel.  Also Gary Halvorson’s closeups were unkind.

Alice Coote and Patricia Bardon as Sesto and Cornelia, respectively were in yet another operatic world. One that was consumed by loss, abuse, and revenge. They took their parts as seriously as they could given the many ringed circus they were surrounded by. Both singers have lovely lyric mezzos. Ms Coote has done only trouser roles at the Met. Ms Bardon’s Met career consists, thus far, entirely of Cornelia in Giulio Cesare, and Erda in the Ring operas 1 and 3 . TolomeoDavid Daniels sang the title role. It’s hard to project the role of one of history’s great fighting generals when you’re making sounds that only dogs can hear, but Daniels did reasonably well. Falsetto and vocal support are contradictory terms. Daniels in the past had delivered a sturdier sound than he displayed on the telecast. Tolomeo is also a countertenor role. Christophe Dumaux has a darker tone than Daniels. He was the king in a brassiere. The real Ptolemy was only 14 at the time the opera is set, but verisimilitude is not a requirement of opera, much less the baroque variety. Rachid Ben AbdeslamThere was yet another falsetto singer – Rachid Ben Abdeslam as Cleopatra’s eunuch Nireno; in Handel’s time he really was played by a eunuch. During his intermission interview he said he was from Morocco – Mars seemed more appropriate. He floated through the opera like a feather on a waft of zephyrs. He was the most interesting performer in afternoon’s the whole long parade.

Baritone Guido Loconsolo was Achilla, Tolomeo’s long time supporter, who goes over to Cleopatra because Tolomeo won’t let him have Cornelia. He fights and loses reappearing covered with so much stage blood that he looks like a giant loaf of lasagna. His normal male voice was jarring among all the canaries. Another baritone, John Moore, played the small role of Curio.

Baroque specialist Harry Bicket was so busy conducting, playing the harpsichord, and trying to stay with the singers that he likely didn’t notice much of what was going on in front of him.

This show will doubtless soon appear on DVD  and on Public TV in addition to a repeat in a few weeks so if you missed it you can easily get a chance to see it. You might like it. But even when separated from show biz, Handel and baroque opera is a specialized taste.

 

GIULIO CESARE
George Frideric Handel-Nicola Francesco Haym

Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar)…..David Daniels
Cleopatra…………………….Natalie Dessay
Cornelia……………………..Patricia Bardon
Sesto (Sextus)………………..Alice Coote
Tolomeo (Ptolemy)……………..Christophe Dumaux
Curio (Curius)………………..John Moore
Nireno (Nirenus)………………Rachid Ben Abdeslam
Achilla (Achillas)…………….Guido Loconsolo
Dancers………………………Christina Luzwick, Karla Dionne Victum, Justin Flores, Kei Tsuruharatani
Actors……………………….Brian Baldwin, Sean Chin, Matthew Cusick, Tony Guerrero, Arthur Lazalde, Shad Ramsey, Christian Rozakis, Sasha Semin, Collin Ware, Philip Willingham, Joshua Wynter, Christian Zaremba

Violin Solo…………………..David Chan

Continuo:
Harpsichord…………………..Harry Bicket
Cello………………………..David Heiss
Theorbo/Lute/Baroque Guitar…….James Daniel Swenberg
Harpsichord ripieno……………Bradley Brookshire

Conductor…………………….Harry Bicket

Production……………………David McVicar
Set Designer………………….Robert Jones
Costume Designer………………Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting Designer……………..Paule Constable
Choreography………………….Andrew George
TV Director………….Gary Halvorson