In the old days, record companies offered you an opera in a box set. But they also offered you a highlights album: a single LP. You know the problem with Handel’s Julius Caesar? It is, basically, nothing but highlights. Over the course of some three and a half hours, “the hits keep coming” (as they used to say on the radio).
That is an amazing “problem” to have.
“Presti omai l’egizia terra.” “Empio, dirò, tu sei.” “Priva son d’ogni conforto.” “Svegliatevi nel core.” “Non disperar; chi sa?”
I have named merely the first five arias. There are about twenty-five more—including “Cara speme,” “V’adoro pupille,” and “Se pietà di me non senti.” This is not to mention the sublime duet that concludes Act I: “Son nata a lagrimar.”
Seldom in music has there been such a creative outpouring. The genius of George Frederick Handel is staggering.
The Salzburg Festival is staging Julius Caesar, with Emmanuelle Haïm in the pit. She leads Le Concert d’Astrée, the group she founded in 2000. The cast is an international one, loaded with countertenors. I will touch on a few members of this cast.
In the title role is Christophe Dumaux, a French countertenor. Last night, when I attended, he sang deftly and authoritatively. Cleopatra was Olga Kulchynska, a Ukrainian soprano. She sang with admirable control.
Lucile Richardot, our Cornelia, was interesting. She is a French mezzo with a big voice. She sang boldly, bringing a hint of verismo to Handel, I swear—and this was not at all out of bounds. Amid the countertenors was a baritone, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, from Moldova. He has a beautiful voice and is a smooth singer. Some of the low notes, he could not quite manage, but this was of little import.
He portrayed Achilla, I should say. His acting was as smooth as his singing.
Ms. Haïm knows her way around Julius Caesar, and many another score. The music was nicely etched, and it breathed well.
That duet, “Son nata a lagrimar,” can electrify an opera house—electrify it in a quiet way. Last night, it was maybe a little rushed, a little loud, a little sloppy.
The evening was, I believe, dominated by the stage direction—by the production, rather than by Handel and the musicians. The director is Dmitri Tcherniakov, a veteran and laureled Russian.
He sets Julius Caesar in a bunker, gray and ugly. Early on, a character snaps a selfie. Cleopatra has pink hair and a pink jacket. She wears black leather pants and very high heels.
Talking about opera productions, I often speak of a “mismatch”: a mismatch between eye and ear. The ear hears one thing (a harpsichord and other period instruments) and the eye sees something very different.
At the center of Baroque opera in our time is a paradox. Musically speaking, you have conservatism, even extreme conservatism. God forbid a string player should give you vibrato. Things must be done exactly as they were in, say, 1724 (when Julius Caesar premiered). But onstage? A director can do whatever he wants—the sky’s the limit.
In 1967, New York City Opera made a famous recording of Julius Caesar (with Sills, Treigle, Forrester, et al.). Today, people consider that recording laughable and heretical. It is “inauthentic.” (It is also very musical.) But people are selective in their demands for authenticity.
Baroque opera is a challenge for stage directors—a challenge and a frustration. Stage directors want to do things. They want action. But Baroque works give you comparatively few opportunities. To modern people, “stand and sing” is an offense. But some of us regard overaction, or incongruous action, as an offense, too. Action can be more awkward than inaction, or slight action.
I love the expression “Don’t just do something, stand there.” But who wants to abide by that?
In Salzburg’s Julius Caesar, there is action aplenty, and some of it is welcome, in my judgment: smart and congruous. I will mention a detail—Caesar blowing smoke rings. That is kind of cool.
How about this? Singing an aria, Tolomeo strips and gropes Cornelia, and is on the verge of raping her, before being led away by Achilla. All of this is witnessed by Cornelia’s son, Sesto, whose legs and arms are tied up and whose mouth is taped shut.
When Cornelia frees him, he sings his own aria, about avenging his father’s murder. As he sings, his mother tries to seduce him.
I had the feeling of experiencing the director more than the composer and his opera. Is this square of me? It would not be the first time.
