tears and hope
by Douglas Messerli
This production, in short, while at times audaciously anarchistic, even
campy, nonetheless emphasizes the dualities dominating Handel’s work, both
musically and narratively. In a work in which the proud, even haughty Roman
Cornelia later washes herself and her son in Tolomeo’s blood, and in which her
seemingly incompetent Hamlet-like son finally becomes enabled to enact revenge,
we cannot but see it as a series of ups and downs. Not only does Giulio Cesare alternate between visions
of tears and hope, between terrible deaths and love, but moves in and out of
sexual identity. Even in Handel’s day, with the performances of several of its
male leads by castrati, the work must have suggested sexual incongruities, but
the Glyndebourne production takes advantage of these sexual indistinctions. One
character, Nireno—who guides several of the opera’s figures to each other—is
played as a flamboyantly gay character. Tolomeo appears to be not only
bisexual—apparently attracted to his soldiers and his loyal Achilla—but early
on expresses incestuous desires for his own sister, as well as expressing his
prowess in his harem, while dressed like a gay S&M figure in harem pants.
Sesto (wonderfully performed by female “pants” specialist Coote), dominated by
his mother, seems to be almost sexless.
In further extremes, loyal followers such as Achilla turn against their
leaders, while Tolomeo’s sister, as I previously mentioned, plots against her
brother. Even the dead, in this production, return to life, Cesare’s soldiers
suddenly springing up again upon his command, and the two bloodied corpses of
Tolomeo and Achilla joining up with other cast members for the coronation party
at opera’s end.
While opera purists and, perhaps, even Handel himself might not have
approved of this 21st century reading of this great opera, I would
argue that the constant alteration between the comic winking and the tragic
melancholic emotions of this work is already embedded in Handel’s music and the
original libretto, and is part of what makes this work so vital as it spins out
its tearful hopes, its sorrowful dreams of peace and love.
Los
Angeles, April 30, 2013
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