Comparison Recordings:
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (excerpts)
DGG LP SLPM 138 637
This is a stunning
recording of a superb performance and
staging. Singing and acting both are
excellent throughout, but one must single
out Pushee and Kenny as Caesar and Cleopatra,
and Elizabeth Campbell in the secondary
role of Sesto, for special praise. Pushee
has exactly the right regal bearing
for Caesar and his brilliant, secure,
agile, counter-tenor voice serves, as
Handel intended, to set him apart from
mere mortals, to make him godlike*.
Yet this Caesar still has a trace of
boyish prankishness in him so his capitulation
to Cleopatra is fully believable. This
Cleopatra has all the classic physical
beauty, the charm and sensuality, and
the regal hauteur required to
conquer the ruler of the world. Elizabeth
Campbell makes her secondary role of
Sesto a focus of dramatic energy and
steals the stage any time she is singing
on it. She fully convinces us that she
is a young man and not a woman in men’s
clothes.
This is more than just
beautiful music. The dramatic situation
is vividly portrayed in this production
as Caesar, alone, enters into Alexandria
from the audience. The Egyptian palace
is a black, mysterious hieroglyph-inscribed
labyrinth where rooms appear and disappear,
passages open up and close up again,
walls are moved by armed Egyptian soldiers
in black tunics, whose arms and faces
appear to float in the air. In all the
times I’ve seen this story told on stage
and on film, I’ve never before felt
this much menace.
The costumes of the
main characters are not too far from
what Handel might have expected to see
on the stage of his time — Caesar wears
a white linen summer uniform and a crown
of laurels, the others are more 18th
century looking — but props lean toward
authentic Egyptian style. The Egyptians
greet Caesar with real palm fronds as
the words of the text require. There
are some amusing anachronisms which
lighten the mood. To show what bad-asses
the Egyptian soldiers are, one of them
lounges against a pillar carelessly
smoking a cigarette. Tolomeo menaces
Cleopatra with a pistol, a Luger it
appears, which is later struck from
his hand by Sesto just as Tolomeo is
overcome and stabbed. In Cleopatra’s
bath seduction scene with Caesar, there
is just a little vamp-and-camp but,
although some snickers from the audience
might have been appropriate, I don’t
know why the audience found this whole
scene so rollickingly hilarious unless
there was some off-camera hi-jinx we
didn’t see. When a beautiful lady is
naked on stage it seems awfully rude
for the audience to laugh.
Video direction is
excellent, which is to say you don’t
notice it, you are generally looking
where you want to look, seeing what
you want to see. Although this is full
screen 4:3 PAL video, it can’t be a
coincidence that the proscenium opening
at Sydney Opera House is 16 by 9 proportion.
Conductor Hickox and the orchestra perform
the score beautifully, authentically
but not brutally so, always there to
give support, yet never covering the
singers. The orchestra observe strict
tempi but the singers occasionally employ
true rubato, allowing their lyric phrases
at the peak of passion to soar free
of bar-lines. And all singers and instrumental
soloists employ exemplary, discrete
ornamentation and embellishment of repeats.
The throne of Egypt
is represented by an impressive Egyptian
artefact, a replica of Tut-Ankh-Amen’s
throne chair. Us Egyptologists get a
laugh out of this because at the time
Caesar was in Egypt Tut-Ankh-Amen’s
throne chair was still sealed in his
tomb buried under 20 feet of rubble
in the Valley of the Kings and would
not see the light of day until 1923.
AD, that is.
If anything, Pushee
and Kinney sing better and better as
the opera progresses. Pushee’s duet
with the on-stage solo violin (Tony
Gault) at the beginning of Act II (Se
in fiorito...) contains some amusing
interactions and stopped the show. On
the other hand, Sesto (Elizabeth Campbell),
while never failing in dramatic intensity,
loses some pitch security and tends
to wail a bit as the opera progresses.
Although Handel’s model
was the Italian opera of the time, Cleopatra’s
lament, like Purcell’s lament for Dido
of, is a chaconne in format, although
Handel has Cleopatra interrupt with
angry vows to haunt her murderer forever.
The final chorus is startlingly like
the final chorus in Bach’s "Coffee
Cantata" which is in all but name
a chamber opera, written at about the
same time. Handel and Bach were not
likely copying each other, but both
probably were observing a convention
from German operas with which both would
have been familiar.
Some day we may get
an absolutely perfect Giulio Cesare.
It will look at lot like this one and
will sound only a tiny bit better. And
I’ll be long dead, so I advise you not
to wait but to enjoy this one now.
* Fischer-Dieskau accomplishes
divinity in his native voice range via
transposition and is an experience not
to be missed by any who love this music.
Paul Shoemaker
Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra/Richard
Hickox. 
EUROARTS
2053599 [146.00 + 62.00]
