(The
following is a draft entry for The
Literary Encyclopedia Online (the completed entry was published online in
June, 2012)
The best-known of all
Handel’s operas, Giulio Cesare in Egitto
(1724) has been performed more times, in more countries, than any other. A
great success in its own time, it was one of the most important works in the
twentieth-century revival of interest in Handel’s operas. Oskar Hagan’s version
for Göttingen in 1922 was given 220 performances in 38 cities within five years
(Dean and Knapp, 507). It has retained its status in the twenty-first century, though
all the surviving operas are now known, performed and recorded. Currently there
are more than twenty versions of Giulio
Cesare available on CD and DVD.
The libretto for the
opera was put together by Nicola Haym, one of Handel’s best collaborators, from
a range of earlier Italian sources, particularly a work of the same name by
Giacomo Bussani.
Julius Caesar has followed
the defeated Pompey to Egypt ,
where the action begins, beside the Nile . Pompey’s
wife Cornelia and her son Sesto (Sextus) arrive asking for peace, and Caesar
agrees to embrace Pompey. But Cleopatra’s brother Tolomeo (Ptolemy) has sent
his general, Achilla, to present the head of Pompey to Caesar as a token of loyalty.
A furious Caesar dismisses Achilla with scorn. Achilla falls for Cornelia. Curio,
a Roman Tribune, proclaims his love for Cornelia, and prevents her taking her
own life, but she is inconsolable, and Sesto vows bitter revenge. Cleopatra,
hearing the news, determines to meet Caesar, ridiculing her brother’s claim to
the throne. Achilla brings Tolomeo news of Caesar’s disdain and proposes the murder
of Caesar (Achilla wants Cornelia’s hand in return). Tolomeo resolves on
murdering Caesar. “Lidia” (Cleopatra in disguise) complains to Caesar of her
treatment by Tolomeo. Both Caesar and Curio are immediately besotted with her.
Cleopatra then overhears Cornelia’s story. Cornelia is determined to take
revenge against Tolomeo, but Sesto insists that this is his destiny. Still as Lidia, Cleopatra promises her support. Caesar
arrives at Tolomeo’s palace, offering a veiled insult, before being shown to
his rooms (where Tolomeo plans to murder him). Cornelia and Sesto are immediately
seized as soon as they reach court. Sesto is imprisoned and Cornelia is
assigned to the seraglio, where Tolomeo plans to have her. Achilla tries to woo
Cornelia who is disgusted by his advances. Sesto is taken off to prison, parted
from his tearful mother. Cleopatra has further plans to seduce Caesar, and
arranges for him to overhear her singing in a delightful grove of cedars with
the Palace of Virtue
and the nine muses on the slopes of Parnassus .
Caesar hears her aria “V’adoro, pupille” (discussed below). Enraptured, he
rushes towards her, but the scene changes and she disappears. However,
Cleopatra’s eunuch, Nireno, announces that “Lidia” awaits him in her chambers.
Tolomeo now takes over the role of Cornelia’s suitor. She thinks him insane,
but he determines on rape if necessary. Alone, Cornelia prepares to hurl herself
to her death, but Sesto intervenes. Nireno announces that Cornelia is to go to
the seraglio, but suggests a murder plot: Sesto might there be able to catch
Tolomeo off-guard. Caesar attends “Lidia” but news of the attempt on his life
interrupts them, and Cleopatra accidentally reveals her true identity. Caesar
escapes the conspirators. Achilla foils the plot to murder Tolomeo in the
seraglio, and then announces the death of Caesar who has thrown himself into
the harbour and drowned; Cleopatra is already armed to revenge his death.
Achilla asks for Cornelia’s hand but he is rudely rebuffed by Tolomeo, who
heads off to engage Cleopatra’s forces. Achilla joins with Cleopatra, but the latter
is taken prisoner in the ensuing battle. Tolomeo is determined to subdue his
haughty sister, putting her in chains to grovel at the foot of his throne.
Caesar, actually alive, having swum to safety, overhears the dying Achilla giving
Sesto a seal which will command a hundred armed men; he mentions a subterranean
passage which will lead directly to the palace. Caesar rescues Cleopatra, and
she heads off to gather her troops for the decisive battle. Meanwhile Tolomeo
is forcing himself on Cornelia when Sesto arrives and kills him. The Romans and
Egyptians celebrate their victory; Caesar crowns Cleopatra Queen of Egypt and
they sing a love duet before a final chorus of celebration.
From the first speech,
which cites the famous “Veni, vidi, vici” in the wrong place at the wrong time
and in the wrong context, the text offers an inventive approach to history. (Dean
and Knapp, 483).
The opera was produced
at the height of Handel’s powers, in 1724 (the first of three new masterpieces
composed in little more than a year – see the entries on Tamerlano and Rodelinda).
The Royal Academy of Music, set up in 1719 for the production of Italian opera
was fully established, as one visitor to England noted a month after the first
performance of Giulio Cesare: “The
passion for the opera here is getting beyond all belief” (Deutsch, 160). The
year before, John Gay had written to Jonathan Swift:
As for the
reigning Amusement of the town, tis entirely Musick. […] Theres nobody allow’d
to say I sing but an Eunuch or an Italian Woman. […] folks that could not
distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different Styles
of Hendel, Bononcini, and Attillio. […] Senesino is daily voted to be the
greatest man that ever liv’d. (Gay, 43)
For Giulio
Cesare Handel had not only Gay’s most famous “Eunuch”, the castrato
Senesino (who of course played Caesar), but also the most celebrated “Italian
Woman”, the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni (Cleopatra, naturally) and a glittering
supporting cast. The result was sensational. Another visitor wrote:
The opera is in
full swing also, since Hendell’s new one, called Julius César — in which
Cenesino and Cozzuna shine beyond all criticism — has been put on. The house
was just as full at the seventh performance as at the first. (Deutsch, 160)
The production ran for thirteen consecutive
nights, and was revived (with changes) for a further ten performances the
following season.
The casting for Giulio Cesare suggests the riot of sexual uncertainty in the operas
of the period. Here was a rare opportunity to have a castrato actually play a
castrato, as Nireno is an Egyptian eunuch. So, in the first production of
February 1724, Giuseppe Bigonzi fulfilled that most logical of castings as “alto
castrato”. But the castrati were generally the expensive stars, and Nireno is a
minor part. The revisions for January 1725 saw Nireno “cut” to a “mute”. But
for the last few nights of the 1725 run Handel revived the role as a singing
part, renaming the character Nirena and making “her” a lady-in-waiting to
Cleopatra, sung by a female soprano. Oddly, though, he didn’t have to make the
sex change. It was quite normal for women to play “male” roles when castrati
were in short supply. After all, the male role of Sesto was first played by Margherita
Durastanti.
It is difficult,
adequately, to summarize the achievements of Handel’s operas in the first period
of the Royal Academy
Cleopatra has nine
arias and in them Handel explores every side of her notoriously protean
personality: dismissive, rude, playfulness (“Non disperar”); a coquettish
enjoyment of the female arts of love (“Tutto può donna”); her optimism, gaiety,
and radiance (“Tu la mia stella”); her beguiling graces (“Venere bella”); her
capacity for profound tragic feeling (“Che sento?”); her sublime sense of noble
pathos (“Piangerò”); her joyous energy (“Da
tempeste”); and her unaffected love (“Caro/Bella”).
But the aria that best
reveals her compelling character is “V’adoro pupille”, perhaps the greatest
seduction aria in musical history. It has the equivalent force of Enobarbus’
famous speech in Antony and Cleopatra:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description [...] (Antony
and Cleopatra, II, ii, 191-198)
Shakespeare, here, follows
his source, North’s Plutarch very
closely. But Plutarch gives an additional detail: “her voyce and words were
marvelous pleasant: for her tongue was an instrument of musicke to divers
sports and pastimes” (Antony and Cleopatra,
pp.247-8). Shakespeare also economises on the music that attends her. His “tune
of flutes” is based on Plutarch’s “sounde
of the musicke of flutes, howboyes, citherns, violls, and such other
instruments as they played upon in the barge” (Antony and Cleopatra, p.246). Cleopatra’s legendary power is one
naturally expressed by the metonym and metaphor of music. In Handel's score it
is her song that seduces Caesar. And
Handel overtrumps Plutarch with his instruments, as Winton Dean notes:
Handel deploys a double orchestra: a group of nine instruments played by
the nine Muses on stage or behind the scenes, including harp, theorbo and viola
da gamba, is contrasted and combined with the main body in the pit, the violins
of both orchestras being muted. The senses of the audience must have been as
ravished as Caesar's. (Dean, 23)
Hearing this music
nearly three-hundred years later, the experience is no less “ravishing”.
Works
Cited
Dean, Winton and John Merrill Knapp. Handel’s Operas 1704-1726. Oxford
Dean, Winton. Notes to Giulio Cesare, dir. René Jacobs. Harmonia Mundi. 1991.
Deutsch, Otto Erich. Handel: A Documentary Biography. London
Gay, John. The Letters of John Gay, ed. C. F. Burgess. Oxford
Haym, Nicola Francesco. Giulio Cesare In Egitto. London
Shakespeare, William. Antony Methuen : London
Recommended
Reading
Burrows, Donald. Handel. Oxford
Dean, Winton. “Handel’s Giulio Cesare”. The Musical Times, Vol. 104, No. 1444 (June, 1963). 402-404. (A
good introduction to the opera, its libretto, and its early casts.)
Dean, Winton and John Merrill Knapp. Handel’s Operas 1704-1726. Oxford
Deutsch, Otto Erich. Handel: A Documentary Biography. London
Monson, Craig. “Giulio Cesare in Egitto: From Sartorio (1677) to Handel (1724)”. Music and Letters, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct, 1985). 313-43. (Gives a comprehensive account of the various libretto treatments of the subject, and their relation to each other
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