Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Salzburg, 2025)

George Frideric Handel - Giulio Cesare in Egitto

Salzburger Festspiele, 2025

Emmanuelle Haïm, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Christophe Dumaux, Olga Kulchynska, Lucile Richardot, Federico Fiorio, Yuriy Mynenko, Andrei Zhilikhovsky, Jake Ingbar, Robert Raso

3Sat Livestream - August 2025

Dmitri Tcherniakov's direction of the new 2025 Salzburg production of Giulio Cesare in Egitto appears to be drenched in irony. Perhaps not surprisingly, as the director rarely takes opera libretti at face value, particularly when the truth of human nature that they seek to present can often be obscured by poetic declamation and sweet music. That is no impediment to Handel, who composed some of his finest music and managed to get to the heart of the complex relationships between people in love and in war, but inevitably we have a different attitude towards modern warfare and dictators now and the impact their actions have on ordinary people. It is necessary - particularly in our current times - to acknowledge that and get it across if you want Handel's opera to say something meaningful about today rather than being an operatic museum piece.

Tcherniakov, as a Russian born director, has addressed such issues before and met them head-on in what would have otherwise been a problematic production of Prokofiev's War and Peace being staged in Munich while Russia was attacking Ukraine not too far away. Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto of course needs no such translation, the composer in his third opera making the complicated situation of Caesar and Pompey's war in Egypt involving Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra perfectly clear. All the hidden sentiments, rivalry, lusts and cruelties are exposed or at least hinted at, but there is a danger that dated but nonetheless heartfelt expressions such as Ptolemy describing Caesar in terms like "This perfidious, unworthy miscreant" might lack the necessary weight behind them that the situation demands. 

The war between Caesar and Pompey might be over, but the 'fall-out' from their power struggle remains, and Tcherniakov chooses to present that in terms of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. If there is an irony in that situation it's a grim one, rendering the participants pathetic figures fighting over a wasteland. Whether you think that's appropriate for what happened in 45 BC or even whether it's relevant to the time of the original composition in 1724, it certainly hammers home the potential endgame of what is being played out on the global scene today. All the main players have been evacuated to a network of underground bunkers (the ordinary citizens presumably left to fend for themselves above ground), their opening praise to Caesar's accomplishments striking that first note of irony. As Cesare, Cleopatra and Tolomeo all strike airs singing airs, the others seem to have little time for their self-delusions; the reality of Pompey's death, Caesar's ambition and Cleopatra's self importance having little truck with the others, not least the grieving Cornelia, the vengeful Sesto and the self-serving Achilla.

The set design and directorial characterisation gets to the heart of the contradiction of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. There is a bloody and violent war going on, there is a struggle for power, a battle of egos, a struggle for dominance, all filled with anger, betrayal and plotting. There is also a measure of some kind of greatness and beauty here with sentiments praising fidelity, beauty, love and genuine human feeling. Handel reconciles those opposing but complementary forces in his music. It's simply a beautifully conceived and composed opera, but of course that is hard to view in the same way several hundred years later, several millennia after the original figures appeared on the world stage, particularly when we are likely to have a different view of how historical events played out in opera compare to real life as we know it. Still, the opera stage is no place for 'real life'; the challenge rather is to make it better and truer to life, if you think such a thing is possible. Handel proves that it is, and the director has to use that key resource to his advantage.

Aside from his great work with Russian opera (outstanding with Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovitch, Borodin, Prokofiev), I'm not convinced that Tcherniakov has a similar feeling for western operas, taking more of a combative approach, breaking them down, stripping them of mannerisms and adornments, viewing them in terms of middle-class psychodramas, turning them around and turning them on the bourgeois western audience who frequently reward the production team with boos for their trouble. A simplistic analysis of Tcherniakov's intent maybe, but although it can sometimes detract from the deeper purpose of the works, his approach still produces interesting results. It certainly worked when Tcherniakov last worked side-by-side with musical director Emmanuelle Haïm on the Gluck Iphigénie en Aulide/Iphigénie en Tauride diptych for Aix-en-Provence last year. Like that production, I don't think Tcherniakov's approach subverts Handel's vision or detracts from the beauty of the work, but I don't think he really adds anything to it either or fully translates it for a modern audience.

Baroque often needs a little more dramatic inventiveness and Tcherniakov's bunker setting really just closes it in. An example of his approach is in Act II, Scene III which the original libretti describes as "Cornelia, con piccola zappa nelle mani, che vien coltivando i fiori" ("Cornelia, in the garden of the seraglio with a small hoe in her hand cultivating flowers"). Here Cornelia sings 'Deh. Piangete, oh mesti lumi, già per voi non v'è più speme' on a mattress where her son Sesto has been trussed up and dumped at her feet as if dead. Unquestionably Tchernaikov's version is a more dramatic alignment with the sentiments expressed by Cornelia, but it's the aria itself and the person singing it that expresses the horror of the situation and that's done here by Lucile Richardot. A baroque specialist, she may not be an ideal Cornelia but she has an interesting expressive dramatic harshness here that suits the character. Tolomeo’s attempted rape in the subsequent aria 'Sì, spietata, il tuo rigore…' does indeed also reflect the intent of the aria and gives the resultant fury of Sesto justification, so Tcherniakov knows exactly how to draw the most out of the scene, perhaps taking it even further than necessary into suggestions of an incestuous nature. That's the general approach taken elsewhere here.

For Scene VII in this Act likewise, Tcherniakov translates Cleopatra’s 'Venere bella' from a "pleasure garden" to Caesar’s bed (or mattress here), which again is realistic and much less "flowery". Each scene is balanced to strike a good balance between realistic behaviour and the operatic flourishes, the singers playing with great intensity. Like his work on War and Peace, Tcherniakov manages to do this by tapping into the fragile state of madness that reflects the current political climate and reflect it on the stage without foolishly trying to represent it with explicit references. Despite a few shock interruptions however and the onstage attempted assassination of Caesar, the grey oppressiveness of the bunker situation is unable to compensate for the otherwise inertness of dramatic action. Since the opera is largely characterised by declamatory arias, ariosos and recitative however perhaps that's too much to expect.

But again, I stress, what can't be denied as hugely effective is the beautiful musical and lyrical content that Handel has arranged. Above everything it's superbly played under the musical direction of Emmanuelle Haïm and in the wonderfully cast and well directed acting of the singers, all of which makes it a gripping and engaging Giulio Cesare. It's impossible to single out any of the cast as more deserving of praise, but evidently the key roles are all impressive. There's the vulnerability and charm of Olga Kulchynska's Cleopatra seeking love and alliance; the lustful imperiousness nobility of Christophe Dumaux's Cesare; the inner strength and dignity with which Lucile Richardot's Cornelia endures her torment and grief; the wonderfully sneery arrogance and casual cruelty of Yuriy Mynenko's floppy haired public schoolboy Tolomeo. Even the secondary roles of Andrei Zhilikhovsky's Achilla and Federico Fiorio's particularly excitable and impetuous Sesto are exceptionally good  with individual interpretations that contrast and complement each other. The roles of Nireno and Curio are necessarily reduced here, but also sung well by Jake Ingbar and Robert Raso. You would of course expect this high standard at Salzburg, and unquestionably this is opera performance and interpretation of the highest order.

External links: Salzburger Festspiele

Purcell - Dido and Aeneas (Aix, 2018)

Henry Purcell - Dido and Aeneas (Aix, 2018)

Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018

Václav Luks, Vincent Huguet, Anaïk Morel, Rokia Traoré, Tobias Greenhalgh, Sophia Burgos, Lucile Richardot, Rachel Redmond, Fleur Barron, Majdouline Zerari, Peter Kirk

ARTE Concert - 12 July 2018

The theme of the 70th Aix-en-Provence Festival is based around the power of myths, and each of the operas in the programme in their own way examine deeper truths that would have application for the times they were written, but such is the nature of great art that those words and sentiments can still have contemporary relevance and application. Even Purcell's 1688 treatment of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas, two rulers of great kingdoms, is believed to have points to make about the English monarchy and the political situation of its time. As far as the present day is concerned, that historical context is unlikely to provide any meaningful commentary, but there is very much something we can relate to in how it also deals with the controversial subject of refugees.

The original prologue for Dido and Aeneas was lost over the centuries since it was first performed, but it's not uncommon for the one-hour or so of the surviving elements to be filled out with other pieces by Purcell or some of his near contemporaries. There aren't many who would go as far as composing a whole new prologue, and it would be hard to imagine anyone wanting to write in the style of Purcell, but Vincent Huguet's production for the Aix Festival shows that it is possible to write something complementary that supports some of the themes of the work and develops some background, putting it into a context that makes some reference to contemporary matters.

Rather than write a musical prologue, the context for the drama of Dido and Aeneas is developed in a mostly spoken word narration with some traditional North African music, created for this production by the French author Maylis de Kerangal. It describes the journey that Dido herself made, a Princess married to her uncle Acerbas, a rival for her father Pygmalion, the King. Becoming a kind of political refugee after her husband is murdered she leaves the Phoenician city of Tyre and travels to North Africa via Cyprus, but the journey by ship is no glorious affair. Related by a Cypriot woman (Rokia Traoré) who came with many others on those ships carried by the winds to North Africa, it was a particularly difficult journey for the women and prostitutes that were picked up along the way.

The Prologue sets the scene then for greater emphasis to be placed on the hardships endured by refugees and by women, both of which are certainly an underlying feature of the subject, not least in the 'love them and leave them' sentiments expressed by the Trojan sailors and by Aeneas, driven by the Gods to his destiny in Italy. Vincent Huguet, a former assistant to Patrice Chéreau, shows both these matters contributing to create a sense of deep unrest in Carthage, more than just in the unresolved romantic situation between Dido and Aeneas that eventually leads to their all too brief marriage.

What is new about this treatment and given greater emphasis in the current political climate is how the subject of refugees can be used to create political divisions, here setting the common Carthaginian people against the refugees from the war in Troy who seem to be enjoying more favour and benefits that their own people. The witches here become rabble rousers, the Sorceress inciting one of the crowd to take up a gun in a terrorist attack that ends up with her being shot dead by the authorities. Whether you think this has a place in Dido and Aeneas or not, it does tap into the tensions that must exist, the choral work of the common people having a role just as important as that of Dido and Aeneas in Purcell's work.

So that it doesn't appear to be too anachronistic - but at the same time evokes the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean - Huguet sets the production in a more recognisably North African setting, the cast also featuring a number of singers of African origin. In fact, the South African soprano Kelebogile Pearl Besong was originally cast in the role of Dido, but had to withdraw for health reasons. She's replaced by the French mezzo-soprano Anaïk Morel who doesn't have the ideal clarity of English diction that the role demands, but brings a deeper regal presence to the role that works well alongside the baritone of Tobias Greenhalgh's Aeneas, equally regal, but again not quite ideal in delivery.

There is some impressive singing from the other members of the cast who bring brightness and spirit to the roles, particularly Lucile Richardot as the rabble-rousing Sorceress and her Mercury-impersonating elf. Richardot stood out when I saw her in the fascinating Bratislava production of Vivaldi's Arsilda, Regina di Ponto a production that was also conducted by Václav Luks. Aside from the context that director Huguet brings to the production, it's Purcell's extraordinarily beautiful music that carries the huge emotional force of the work, and Luks's directing of the Ensemble Pygmalion finds that deep resonance within the work. If Dido's Lament, 'Remember me' and the choral finale don't move you to tears, something has gone wrong somewhere. There's nothing wrong with this Dido and Aeneas.

Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, ARTE Concert

Vivaldi - Arsilda (Bratislava, 2017)

Antonio Vivaldi - Arsilda, Regina di Ponto

Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava - 2017

Václav Luks, David Radok, Lucile Richardot, Olivia Vermeulen, Kangmin Justin Kim, Fernando Guimarães, Lisandro Abadie, Lenka Máčiková

Culturebox - 9th March 2017

Composed for Venice in 1716, Vivaldi's fourth opera, Arsilda, Regina di Ponto is a typical example of the established opera seria form, a royal intrigue filled with disguises and mistaken identities that cause much confusion and turmoil in the political and romantic concerns of the kingdom. What can't be disguised however is Vivaldi's lively and vigorous approach to the music, which is vividly brought out in this performance of the opera by the Czech baroque ensemble Collegium 1704 conducted by Václav Luks in the first staged performance of the work in 300 years. It's the stripping away of disguises to the heart of the true sentiments underneath that also forms the basis for the Bratislava production directed by David Radok.

Like most early baroque operas, there is a little bit of a backstory to the considerable complications that have arisen which need to be resolved over the course of the opera. Following the death of the King of Cilicia, the Queen has managed affairs until her son Tamese is of the age to rule. A marriage has also been arranged between Tamese and Arsilda, the daughter of the King of Pontus to consolidate the throne and secure the kingdom from threats from their enemies. Unfortunately Tamese is believed drowned at sea in a shipwreck, so the Queen, needing a successor to the throne, has disguised Lisea, Tamese's twin sister, to take his place.

As the opera starts, Arsilda isn't happy that her fiancé hasn't shown much in the way of amorous intentions towards her. Since she is also being pursued by Barzane - formerly the fiancé of Lisea - this causes her some confusion and doubts about the marriage. Lisea, disguised as Tamese and feeling betrayed at Barzane's behaviour, is no less confused about how she is going to make this arrangement work. Without any plan, she puts her faith in the passing of time and unexpected events to sort things out. This is a wise policy which it has to be said is not often taken by meddling rulers in opera seria, because - you will not be surprised to find out - Lisea's twin brother Tamese is not actually dead, but alive and unaccountably employed in the court as a gardener. Not that this makes the ensuing complications any less troubling for all those involved.

Nor indeed does it make the complications any easier for the audience to figure out. Aside from the confusions over identity - which is indeed very hard to keep up with and which I'm not even going to attempt to unravel - the plot itself, the sentiments behind them and the path to resolution aren't that difficult to grasp. Basically, everyone thinks they are in love with the wrong person not knowing that they are actually the right person, but in disguise. At the same time, just to add to their woes, they don't really believe they love the person they are with, even if they can't quite figure out that the person they think they are with is not the person they think.

It sounds complicated, but all it is really illustrating is how love is never as straightforward and as simple as we might like to think it ought to be. In Arsilda, Regina di Ponto, the heart that knows its own mind and can't be denied without it resulting in much unhappiness and regret. And long arias of woe of course, although on that front Vivaldi is rather more concise and punchy in delivery, without all the endless da capo reiterations. And when you get down to the root cause of all their concerns about whether she/he (or indeed in the travesti/castrato make up of baroque opera is he/she actually a she/he?) is in love with them, it very much sets the same sense of confusion and fear about whether we will find our true love.

If you're Lisea (disguised as Tamese), you could put your faith in time and events sorting things out for themselves, but the matter is more easily resolved than that in Vivaldi's opera: everyone eventually simply removes their disguises and goes back to being who they truly are. If that's not the cleverest plot development I've ever come across in the complicated love entanglements of an opera seria, it's certainly one of the neatest, with the added benefit that everyone seems to come out of the arrangement happy. It also has a more down-to-earth quality than the clemency or wisdom of a great ruler handing down a solution, and it has the more basic universal truth of 'be yourself' within it.

If David Radok's direction and the ravishing costume designs of Zuzana Ježková don't contribute a great deal to making it clear who exactly is who they say they are and who they really are, they certainly set about illustrating that essential underlying theme. For the first two thirds or so of the opera, everyone is dressed in elaborate and somewhat stylised 18th century court costumes, with heavy wigs and considerable make-up. Gradually, each of the characters strips out of those costumes, down to rather more simple modern suits and slips as they strip themselves of their false identities and reveal their true self. Stripped of all their royal finery and away from the court intrigue they are ordinary people with everyday human feelings. It's a simple gesture, but one that neatly encapsulates everything that the opera seems to be about.

There's not a great deal of insight or elaboration that you can make out of the plot of Arsilda without unnecessarily over-complicating it further, but Vivaldi's music has its own charm that ensures that there is never a dull moment and that you don't really have to care if you haven't grasped who each of the characters are. All the more so with a riveting performance of the period instrument Collegium 1704 ensemble under Václav Luks that makes the work sound so fresh and alive. All the singing performances are also an absolute delight; Olivia Vermeulen's Arsilda is impressive, as is Fernando Guimarães's Tamese, but it's Lucile Richardot's Lisea and Kangmin Justin Kim who manage to touch more deeply on the underlying simplicity that Luks and Collegium 1704 find at the heart of Vivaldi's score, the opera ending on a reflective note of peaceful simplicity and harmony.

Links: Slovak National Theatre, Culturebox

Purcell - Dido and Aeneas (Rouen 2014 - Webcast)

Henry Purcell - Dido and Aeneas

Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie, 2014

Vincent Dumestre, Cécile Roussat, Julien Lubek, Vivica Genaux, Henk Neven, Ana Quintans, Marc Mauillon, Jenny Daviet, Caroline Meng, Lucile Richardot, Nicholas Tamagna

Culturebox - 13 May 2014

There's a certain amount of leeway built into Purcell's compositions which, like most early opera work, accounts for a variety of interpretation in response to the music and in how to make the work meaningful and accessible to a modern audience. Such is the degree of openness and richness in Purcell's operas, masques and semi-operas and the amount of improvisation required that it is even unlikely to sound exactly the same from one night to the next, never mind from one production to the another.

Musically that keeps things very fresh and immediate for the musicians and the singers - I'm sure there's never anything routine about performing such a work as Dido and Aeneas - but the same goes for the approach to staging. As I noted in a recent review of King Arthur, a considerable amount of thought needs to be given over to making those very old stories and their method of presentation accessible to a modern audience. The approach of Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie to Dido and Aeneas is very different from Sestina's for King Arthur, but the result is equally as effective.

While most Purcell operas require a certain amount of reduction and cutting back - as mainly masques or semi-operas they would originally have constituted a full evening's entertainment of songs, dance, music, drama and spectacle - Dido and Aeneas is a shorter work that was reportedly composed to be performed by a girl's school in Chelsea. The Rouen production however is one of the longest versions I've heard of the work, running to around 80 minutes rather than the usual hour or so. Whether extra music has been included or improvised and extended for the missing dance numbers, I'm not sure, but it at least gives the audience value for their money without having to pair it with another short work.

While there would be no question of this production providing a full evening's entertainment just from the spectacle of the stage production, Rouen's production shows that Dido and Aeneas is also a strong enough drama to sustain a longer performance. In fact, the epic nature of the mythological origins of the story almost calls out for a grander interpretation (if not quite of Berlioz Les Troyens dimensions) as long as it doesn't come at the expense of losing the necessary intimacy of the tragedy of the love of Dido and Aeneas. This is achieved in Rouen through a balance of the spectacle and the performance of the orchestra on period instruments.

The concept for the stage production seems to be based on the idea of the evocation of Dido's Carthage being a magic kingdom of ancient times, or one that has even more so become a place of wonder with the arrival of Aeneas, coming to these shores fleeing from the destroyed Troy, and falling in love with their Queen Dido. This is achieved without clever technical effects, using traditional methods of stagecraft with pulley operations, the colourful theatrical backdrops and lighting creating not a royal court but a blue bay flanked by rocky outcrops with nymphs dancing on billowing silk waves.

There are however stormy skies on the horizon which indicates that all this is about to change as the Sorceress appears and demands that Aeneas continue his journey to Italy. The set switches over to this change of mood cleverly, retaining a sense of 'merveilleux' as the rocky shoreline transforms into an undersea grotto where dark creatures scuttle acrobatically on the ocean floor, mermaids float and the Sorceress takes the form of a huge grotesque octopus. The tone is held marvellously by the design, and there are a few other clever touches in Act III, such as Dido's dress unravelling to become a sea that swallows her during her final lament.

If the stage setting provides the scale for the epic mythology, the music and the singing provide the necessary intimacy for the love story at the heart of the work. The musical arrangement for this interpretation follows the indications on the Chelsea score and is principally string based with some harpsichord continuo. Stings are plucked, lutes provide a solid rhythm along with a guitar, which is strummed at times to give an almost Spanish-guitar sound, but there's still a folk-music element there. Vivica Genaux sings well but doesn't have the richness, fullness or perhaps that certain English plumminess that the role of Dido requires. Henk Neven provides a good strong Aeneas, and Ana Quintans is a very fine Belinda.

Links: Culturebox