Moral outrage one moment, coquettish expediency the next. The intrigues of the powerful interwoven with the desperation of hapless refugees. When it comes to the gamut of human emotion and modes of behaviour, few operas of the baroque period can touch Handel’s GIULIO CESARE IN EGITTO, which premiered in London in 1724. This tale of the love affair between the ageing Roman general Julius Caesar and the young pharaoh Cleopatra was one of Handel’s greatest triumphs within his lifetime and remains his most performed opera. That is not just down to the base material – one of the best-known historically attested love stories, which has been given treatments ranging from Shakespeare to Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and “Asterix und Cleopatra” – but also to a sophisticated libretto that provided the inspiration for a string of great arias and memorable character studies, for aside from the Roman-Egyptian pairing of Caesar and Cleopatra GIULIO CESARE IN EGITTO features another pair who are busy not with flirting but with the serious business of staying alive: Cornelia, the widow of Pompeius, a murdered rival of Caesar, and her son Sesto. Both have sought refuge in Egypt but have become pawns in the scheming between Cleopatra and her brother Tolomeo.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin presents GIULIO CESARE IN EGITTO in the acclaimed production by Scottish director David McVicar, which was developed at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera House and also performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera. McVicar employs baroque-style soffit curtains to create a variety of backdrops for the acting out of sentiments ranging from tragedy to Cleopatra’s humour and charm as she goes to work on the visiting strong man from Rome.

Spotlight
Ileana Cotrubas, the renowned Romanian soprano, was right to follow her hunch and take her young North Ossetian fach colleague Elena Tsallagova under her wing, once she was convinced of her talent. It was a leg-up that led to Tsallagova debuting at the Opéra de Paris and becoming a member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin following a period at Munich. In Berlin she has not only appeared in a wide repertoire of works ranging from Mozart to Zemlinsky via Verdi and Meyerbeer over the last 15 years but also demonstrated an almost peerless versatility as an operatic thespian, most recently as Zdenko/Zdenka in Tobias Kratzer’s celebrated staging of ARABELLA. She now tackles a baroque work, showing us another facet of her skill set as Handel’s Cleopatra.

A production of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Presented by radio 3 from rbb and taz.

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