Giulio Caesare, Bollywood style

David Daniels and Natalie Dessay (Caesar and Cleopatra)

How do you measure time?  Spend five hours in a cramped airplane, and you can travel from Seattle all the way across the country to New York City.  Or, spend the same amount of time in a dark movie theater, and you've watched Handel's opera, Giulio Caesare.

The sandwiches were packed by 8 and the opera started at 9. That would be AM, not PM.  Some people really know how to treat themselves on a rainy Saturday morning.

The critics described this new production as "imaginative, daffy, charming and affecting."  I've never seen an entire Bollywood movie, but I got the idea.  Some of the arias were staged like those funky Indian dance numbers. The costumes?  Well, everything from British military uniforms, Scottish kilts, 1920's American flapper dresses, riding jodhpurs and fancy ball gowns.  With a few pieces of Roman body armor thrown in for good measure. As John likes to say, he didn't realize Handel's masterpiece "needed so much help."

The opera is the famous story about Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt and Cleopatra.  But you wouldn't know that from the setting, what with servants wheeling in tea sets, blimps hovering over modern warships and a handy pistol to kill the bad guy.  (Not to mention, all the dead come back in time for a happy ending.) 

Cleopatra

So just a few liberties were taken with Handel's Baroque masterpiece.  Still, it was fun to watch. As operas go, this is a very old one.  It was first performed in 1724 and was an instant hit. By the 19th century it had fallen into obscurity, but was revived in the 1930's by young Herbert Von Karajan.  Now Giulio Cesare is considered one of the finest operas ever written in the old form called opera seria. 

If you don't like Baroque music, just run in the opposite direction.  This opera is a long string of arias (granted, very beautiful ones) but if all the "repeats" were taken out of the lyrics and music, the show would be about 35 minutes long.

Can you sit still and enjoy the same words sung over and over for 20 minutes or so? Then you probably also love the Brandenburg Concertos, and would appreciate the many lovely arias of Giulio Ceasare.

Mr. Senesino, 1720

In other ways too, the opera requires a mindset from a different place and time. For example, the role of Julius Caesar is sung by a countertenor.  Yes, that would be a guy with a sweet, falsetto, trilling voice. And if that isn't odd enough, imagine such a voice coming from the mouth of a burley, manly soldier like Caesar.  Here's the creepy part. The role is sung by a countertenor because Handel originally wrote the part for Senesino, his favorite castrato singer. (gulp)

Thankfully, men with such voices also exist in nature.  Although that style of male singing went out of fashion, countertenors like David Daniels are in demand again for all types of classical music.

And forget about Caesar-- remember the big hit "Sherry" sung by the Four Seasons? You get the picture.