Giulio Cesare In Egitto

Description

"December 1676. Cavalli has just died, Stradella has just written San Giovanni Battista, and Alessandro Scarlatti is celebrating his sixteenth spring. Four decades after the founding of its public opera — a transformation of a genre that was born in the most private of settings — Venice is to lyrical art what Hollywood will be to cinematic art in 1930. And it is there, at the Teatro San Salvatore, in a Serenissima converted to love intrigues in D minor, to tragic castratos, to burlesque cross-dressers, and gradually to the aria that will lead the next century by the nose, that a certain Antonio Sartono presents his tenth dramma per musica, Giulio Cesare in Egitto. A success that will travel across Italy before leaving the stage for good, defeated at the end of the 17th century by a new and irresistible style, the bel canto. We discover a complete and whole work, saturated with wonders (“La speranza,” the final scene of Tolomeo…), swift, prolific, urgent. - At the cost of significant although unobtrusive cuts, all the performers convey this unexpected urgency. Undoubtedly, Maria Cristina Kiehr has sung better, and Dominique Visse's theatrical instinct, combined with a flawless musical sense, stumbles on the final pages. But the celebration is truly spoiled only by two devastated heroines, Cleopatra and Comelia, the former lacking charm and technique, the latter lacking control and high notes. Everything else, Pendatschanska's vehement Caesar, Steven Cole's cunning nurse, Amel Brahim-Djelloul's cherubic Sextus, the dazzling Cetra of Basel, and the irresistible momentum imparted by Attilio Cremonesi, does more than justice to this colorful drama. Venice 1676, without a shadow of a doubt, a discovery." DIAPASON D’OR discovery (February 2006)