Must Have Giulio Cesare Ricci

In Baroque opera the dramatic figure of Gaius Julius Caesar received a considerable amount of attention from librettists and composers alike, and not just from G.F. Handel working with Nicola Francesco Haym. With Giulio Cesare, a Baroque hero, Raffaele Pe creates a full recital devoted to the Ancient Roman warrior and Dictator of the Republic, drawn from operas spanning the length of the eighteenth century.

Those who are looking for a traditional production of one of Handel's greatest operas are advised to stay clear of this release. Director Herbert Wernicke, who also designed the sets and the costumes, has turned Giulio Cesare into archaeological fantasy: the entire opera takes places on top of a giant replica of the Rosetta Stone, and the final chorus is sung by camera-clicking tourists. (Shades of Philip Glass's Akhnaten!) Achilles, Ptolemy's general, is dressed like Indiana Jones's less svelte brother, and throughout the course of the production we see, at different times, dresses and uniforms that could have been worn in the century just past, powdered wigs that could have been worn in the 1700s, and a man (fortunately silent!) in a crocodile costume, who apparently represents the spirit of Egypt…

Raymond Tuttle

Natalie Dessay is one of great delights of the opera world today and her recordings have all been excellent. This however ,in my opinion , is her best disc to date. Her voice is so suited to the music. My only hope is that if a production of Giulio Cesare comes to Royal Opera House they cast Natalie Dessay . The conductor (Emmanuelle Haïm) and Orchestra (Le Concert d'Astrée) bring the music alive. This disc is 65 minutes of sheer joy.

"Giulio Cesare" is the most famous and popular of Handel's many operas. In fact, for a long time it was the only one surviving in the repertoire, and brilliant productions of it in the 1960s were responsible for inciting interest in other Handel operas. Giulio Cesare contains perhaps a greater variety of beautiful arias and choruses than any other Handel opera, and has one of the best plots. This 1989 recording stars contralto Martine Dupuy, very famous in France but little known in the Western hemisphere. She made a sterling reputation in Baroque opera as well as the opere serie of Rossini, in which she has been adjudged incomparable.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding.

Giulio Cesare proved by far the most popular of Handel’s operas, both originally and in modern revivals. Its straightforward plot and all-star original cast drew from Handel exceptional depth and subtlety in musical characterisation and lavish orchestral colours; Cleopatra’s seductive stage orchestra – harp, theorbo and viola da gamba with muted accompaniment from the pit – is unique. René Jacobs set the standard in 1991 (on Harmonia Mundi). By comparison, this is milder, more pensive. Bowman is superbly flexible – he seems to become ever more fluent over the years – yet less powerful and imperious than Jennifer Larmore, the earlier.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt, HWV 17), commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio.

The set has various virtues in its favor. Richter conducts an orchestra of modern instruments somewhat stolidly, but always with lyrical polish and sumptuous tone, and one can enjoy its lush richness, however anachronistic it may be. Nor are his tempos stereotypically sluggish; many of the sprightlier moments bounce along energetically. The soprano role of Cleopatra is sung by a young Tatiana Troyanos, who later became a celebrated mezzo-soprano (and eventually undertook the title role in stage productions, making her perhaps the first singer in history to undertake the roles of both Cleopatra and Caesar). It’s interesting to hear her in her earlier soprano incarnation. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau makes a valiant baritone effort at Caesar’s alto arias and, while he avoids the woolly grumbling some bass-baritones make of the part, seems less than emotionally committed. His second aria, “L’empio diro, tu sei,” for example, sounds polite and cautious rather than raging and indignant.

This Harmonia Mundi DVD release of GIULIO CESARE from Denmark, recorded in 2005 is, quite simply, magnificent. Everything about this release signifies a major event, starting with the packaging. A beautifully produced gatefold DVD case, attractively and conveniently laid out. The booklet gives all the relevant information, with the synopsis synchronized with the tracks (the only drawback is that there are only 9 tracks for the first DVD, 15 for the second; given that Universal Classics painstakingly separates the recits from the arias {the Ponnelle film of COSI for example has over 35 tracks per DVD}, this is inconvenient, because you have to do more searching if you want to)…

Giulio Cesare, Händels aufwändigste Oper aus dem Jahre 1724, markierte im März 1994 den Beginn der Münchner Händelrenaissance. Mit einer spektakulären Premiere sorgte Intendant Sir Peter Jonas international für Furore. Weit über 100 Aufführungen von 1994 bis 2006 spielten vor ausverkauftem Haus.