Giulio Cesare in Egitto (2022)

Dramma per musica in tre atti

Musik: Georg Friedrich Händel (HWV 17), Libretto: Bussani / Haym

Scenic restaging by the ensemble così facciamo on period instruments with spirituals, blues & jazz by Georg Gershwin.

Cast: Giulio Cesare - Lena Spohn / Cleopatra - Stephanie Krug / Sesto - Christian Sturm / Cornelia - Martina Koppelstetter / Tolomeo - Joel Vuik / Achilla - Joel Frederiksen / Nireno - KS Christopher Robson

stage direction: Martina Veh / musical direction: Hans Huyssen

così facciamo with Jazzensemble with Matthias Preißinger (piano) and Stefan Schreiber (saxophone)

If Giulio Cesare is Handel's most popular and therefore most frequently performed opera today, it is probably due to the subject of the exotic love affair between Caesar and Cleopatra, which always attracts lively audience interest. The fact that the opera is also a compositional masterpiece and contains some of Handel's catchiest and most demanding arias makes its realization all the more appealing. Finally, the fact that the context and location of the action (Egypt, occupied by Rome in about 50 B.C.) provide an opportunity to reflect on Orientalism and colonization makes it an compellingly topical educational piece for our times (unfortunately, once again).

Although historical figures and exotic settings are characteristic of 18th-century libretti, they ultimately serve only as noncommittal frameworks for the depiction of variations of an eternally identical, doctrinaire, moralizing European heroic epic: a long-suffering hero, but one endowed with virtue, patience and courage, finally overcomes all cruel adversaries and strokes of fate. Operas of this type are only performed today because some composers have succeeded in subversively unhinging this schema and transforming template-like stage characters into understandable, feeling and tangible individuals by means of nuanced musical characterizations. Handel is at the forefront here. The modern revival of baroque opera owes a great deal to his gift for always finding a startlingly accurate musical expression for certain moods, dramatic situations, inner processes, etc., with few means, in which even today's listeners can recognize themselves.

In the meantime, however, another political-performance intervention becomes necessary. Just as Handel transforms distant and foreign historical figures into familiar ones that are close at hand, it is now time to integrate distant and supposedly exotic settings into one's own world of experience, so as not to fall into the pitfalls of an Orientalism that is no longer tenable - even if only out of wrongly understood faithfulness to the original. Our production therefore relocates the action to the roaring twenties of the last century, to an ambience characterized by Egyptomania, the Jazz Age, Egypt's finally achieved independence, and an openness to the clash of diverse cultural currents. The aim is in no way to falsify or distort the score, but - on the contrary - to rethink performance practice from the spirit of the work and to transport Handel's music into the future. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)