The English Concert’s mad quest to film and release (free of charge) every piece, every note Handel penned — surely way over a hundred hours of music — doesn’t seem to be getting as much publicity as it might. One effect of now having their shows recorded is a new sense of urgency in performances by this venerable group (founded by Trevor Pinnock in 1973). Also of course they’ve had to pay more attention to the visual angle of these operas-in-concert, the singers doing their best to bring a bit of “your actual acting” to the concert platform. This can be perilous as well as welcome: fab when done right, but the balance can be tricky to find , and sometimes a bit of input from a proper dramatic director might be an idea.
Recent outings have been a bit varied: a Barbican Alcina was scuppered by one of the great Joyce di Donato’s somewhat unfiltered panto-dame turns, while a storming Amadigi at Handel’s church — St George’s, Hanover Square — found the perfect mix of singing and drama (helped no doubt by the relative intimacy of the space). And while I’m a big fan of this group and their conductor (since 2007) Harry Bicket, his style can be a bit cool and English for a bigger space like the Barbican, though you have to love the gentlemanly way he sits placidly at his harpsichord, directing with the smallest gestures – just as Handel would have done – and not prancing about like a marionette as is the fashion with some of the early-musico gang.
Well, Giulio Cesare is full-on opera seria — with over four hours of music, uncut, so it’s hardly ever played in full (and wasn’t here) — but not without its lighter side: minxy Cleo, natch, but also some byplay with bit-part characters, plus the definitely comedic way the fanatically gloomy Cornelia (Pompey’s widow-abrupto) keeps being stopped in the nick of time from topping herself. Actually its mixed (and deepening) tone is one of the great things about the opera, essentially a love-story between two of the most unscrupulous and opportunist creatures you could wish not to meet — in which it echoes Poppea and Agrippina — that unexpectedly lurches into near-tragedy and some terrific character-painting by Handel as he puts Julius and Cleo through the mill and finds surprising depths in them.
Still, we were sailing perilously close to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I’m not convinced our first reaction to Pompey’s murder by Ptolemy should be a good chuckle, but as a henchman jauntily toted the chap’s head onstage in a Waitrose bag, that’s how it went. Lashings of hamming throughout ensured more of this sort of thing.
This was an admirable performance, capped by a characteristically perfect turn by Louise Alder as Cleopatra
But enough whingeing: this was an admirable performance, capped by a characteristically perfect turn by Louise Alder as Cleopatra: musical, gorgeous-toned, funny, touching and completely assured on stage — a complete all-rounder, with a growing repertoire shortly expanding to the bigger Mozart roles of the Countess in Figaro and Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. It’s a shame she was shorn of the sparky “Tu la mia stella sei”, but this was a thoroughly convicting portrait of the needy, spoiled, tricky queen — the sort of gal who can consummate and ruin your life all at the same moment — on her journey to becoming a kind of human being.
The only thing lacking (a big thing, actually) was much sizzle between her and Christophe Dumaux’s self-satisfied Caesar. He, an expert turn for sure, went down a bomb with the capon-fancying crowd, but really his counter-tenor is a bit restricted in tone, however accomplished the coloratura, and JC really needs to be more of a sensualist to make the relationship work. Julius is, eventually, as rounded as Cleo, but here he remained the rather smug, shallow soldier-hero, despite being as impressed and seduced as we all were by “Lydia” (Cleo in disguise) doing her sizzling “V’adoro, pupille” cabaret number, enchanted with twangling lutes and a harp, and singing his own “Aure, deh, per pietà” — a sort of lovelorn hymn to peace-after-strife — with great craft and beauty, but not much depth.
The darker side of things belongs to Cornelia, who can be a bit of a drag with her extravagant misery, coming as a double-act with her Hamletty son Sextus, set on avenging his dead father but taking his time. Beth Taylor is a really promising young contralto, a voice as rich and deep and dark as the great Italian Sara Mingardo, and sang with not-wholly-necessary big gestures that upped the misery to world-champ levels, while Paula Murrihy’s Sextus sang simply and beautifully, trusting the music — which, with something like the time-stands-still love-song to hope “Cara speme”, Joseph Crouch’s comforting, eloquent cello shepherding the voice along with a gentle harpsichord, will certainly deliver. The various baddies and wingers did their bits perfectly well, with the flamboyant John Holiday earning my gratitude by doing a good deal less flouncing than he might have, as the epicene Ptolemy.
Bicket’s smallish band (11 violins, etc) played with their customary soft-edged bounce, incisive and virtuosic without extravagant gestures, the horn solo of “Va tacito” pulled off by the stalwart Ursula Paludan Monberg, the jaunty birdie-violin
that duets with Julius in “Se in fiorito ameno prato’”tossed blithely off by leader Nadya Zwiener. Two theorboes and a harp plucked a delightful continuo, throwing a charm of stars around Cleopatra’s first entrance. Handel’s orchestra is as much part of the drama as the singers, and it’s always a delight to hear them out of the pit. Sure, in the end we lose a bit of dramatic focus and narrative without a true “staging” of the piece, but we dispense too with the impertinent interventions of directors, and the opera can play to its fullest breadth inside the head. It’s a good trade-off, and nobody was short-changed here.
