“Giulio Cesare” by William Christie

I watched Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” conducted by William Christie.

This is the third opera I’ve watched conducted by him. And yet, it’s hard for me to describe what his music is like. One, because I’m not able to grasp his music well yet and the second, his music style is so different for each opera.

His orchestration in “Il Sant’ Alessio” was wonderfully simple and sensitively detailed. His orchestration in Monteverdi’s “Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria” (The return of Ulysses) was little fast and strong. This opera has many good songs sung by wonderful singers/actors. But somehow his orchestra played loud music almost in the manner of competing with these non-light weight Baroque singers, which included many tenors. With the bombardment of sounds, by the end of the opera, I was somehow exhausted.

Many of the Handel opera conductors I’ve listened so far, I could call the sound of their orchestration “elegant” or  “refined” but I cannot say the same things about his “Giulio Cesare”. His sounds were very good but rather on the little rough side. Instead, his music in this production had passion and tension.

And this is Handel. Nothing goes wrong with his music.

Caesar in this production did not end up in Egypt but in India at the end of WWⅠ.

 All the singers are the world top class who sung with such passion.

Sarah Connelly played Caesar. She has very beautiful, skillful and big full-scale mezzo-soprano voice which matched the role really well. She is wonderful singer and actress. In singing Caesar, she was almost good as Andreas Scholl.

Also the good thing about her is that she has certain male looks on her so it was not so weird to watch her play a trouser role. She was very masculine on the stage. So I was surprised to find how feminine she is in the interview in DVD. She was so gentle like delicate flower. I’ve watched her sing but never seen her talk before. There was no single thread about her manly. There was the huge difference between her as person and the man on the stage like night and day.

The aria in this opera, “Se in fiorito ameno prato” is her coloratura contest with a violin. I noticed that Sarah sung like bird in this aria. In her interview, she told the interesting story about how she heard birds singing at her cottage and started writing down the notes. Then, she incorporated them to her aria with her violinist partner.

One of the biggest charms of this production along with Sarah is Danielle De Niese who played Cleopatra. She has very beautiful silky soprano voice. Her voice is very modern and earthy. Though her voice is so beautiful, it also has the feminine hysteric pleading texture. This is the reason why her voice is not necessary my ideal female voice for Handel. But also because of the texture, she sounds so good singing Poppea in “L’Incoronazione di Poppea”.

Nevertheless, she was the powerhouse in the production. She has beautiful face with big infectious smile and big puppy eyes. She also has full-figure sex appeal with very perky personality. She looks more like Hollywood star rather than opera star both on and off stage.

So I should not even surprised to see her and other characters suddenly started dancing Bollywood in this production. She danced many arias so well while singing wonderfully. Who could ever thought Bollywood dance and Handel’s music mix so well together? This production is so much like musical.

There is one video clip on YouTube which she and Sarah were singing the Nero and Poppea duet accompanied by Antonio Pappano’s piano. They sang lovingly staring at each other’s eyes and at the end of the duet, still staring, Danielle innocently took and hold Sarah’s hand so gently with her big puppy eyes. With this, she must drive a lot of men crazy.

She has the same dramatic appealing nature in both her singing and acting. So under her outer perkiness, there are very serious and professional sides of her, which are not only coming out from the bottom of her lungs but also her passion.

This production also has a lot of action with high-tensioned violence which many of them coming from the character of Ptolemy played by countertenor, Christophe Dumaux. He should get the supporting actor award for playing violently lunatic, unpredictable, flamboyant king with some comical elements. Especially in his first memorable aria scene, his acting was so fun to watch; there was exciting anticipation to see what he’s going to do next. He did all these acting while singing wonderfully which had such forceful tension.     

Another biggest charm of this production is the stage direction by David McVicar.  He has such dramatic stage directing skills which showed in the whole stage atmosphere including strong acting by the singers. Watching his work, I realized that the ability of stage director makes such big difference in quality of production.