When I was a young opera student in London many years ago, it became clear to me that there was a definite, if unwritten, vocal hierarchy. My performance interest was in the major composers of the ‘long’ nineteenth century, beginning with Mozart, but then Italian operas by Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini, culminating in Verdi and Puccini, with the occasional French opera as part of the mix. If one was lucky to have a voice with the capacity to sing these roles, this became the focus of all one’s attention. Some brave souls went off to explore the works of Wagner. Pedagogues and vocal coaches rightly held that young singers needed time to develop the stamina to sing Wagner’s music effectively and that bad choices could be vocally fatal. 

For those who did not possess voices of the requisite size and weight, there appeared to be two options. One might focus on contemporary opera, where vocal opulence was not the most essential quality; much more important was the appropriate musicality and intelligence to engage with modernist music of often astounding complexity and difficulty. Another potential path was found under the all-embracing, but highly ambiguous term, ‘early music’. Apart from a few operas by Monteverdi and Cavalli, the composer who seemed the most likely to provide performance opportunities was Handel. His operas were rapidly being rediscovered but were not part of the operatic mainstream; contact with these works was often through the heroic efforts of small opera groups, struggling for funds and operating with a mix of amateur and professional performers.

Looking back, it is astounding to see how central and mainstream Handel’s operas now are, with recordings and videos readily available. For this reviewer, and many other local opera goers, a personal ‘Handel breakthrough’ was a 1990s performance of Giulio Cesare in Egitto directed by Francisco Negrin and conducted by Richard Hickox at the Sydney Opera House, with Graham Pushee in the title role, and Yvonne Kenny as Cleopatra; her provocative bathing scene still vividly remembered. Countertenor Pushee’s superb performance did much to convince one that this was the ‘correct’ and most effective casting of this role – not baritones as sometimes occurred. Sarah Connolly’s stunning performance of Caesar in the superb David McVicar production for Glyndebourne Opera in 2005 emphasised that this role could be performed equally effectively by a mezzo or contralto.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto is Handel’s most performed opera. Apart from the extensive and brilliantly written parts of Caesar and Cleopatra, the opera has a range of strong secondary roles. With a libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, it was first performed at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket in London three hundred years ago – on 20 February 1724. Haym appropriated an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, set to music by Antonio Sartorio and staged in Venice in 1677.

From the outset, Handel’s opera fired the public imagination; the initial success due in no small part to the casting. The great castrato Francesco Bernardi (‘Senesino’) sang Caesar, and the celebrated soprano Francesca Cuzzoni was Cleopatra. Handel had once threatened to defenestrate her when she refused to sing an aria of his. Cuzzoni was widely regarded as the finest female singer of her generation; contemporary Charles Burney described her as a ‘complete mistress of her art’. Handel, well aware of the phenomenal capacities of these singers, provided them with eight arias each (star singers were extremely jealous of the number of arias they had, signifying their position in the hierarchy rather than the importance of their role). Handel revised the opera several times after its premiere, and it soon reached European cities.

The opera is typical of the opera seria genre consisting of what to many can be a monotonous series of three-part, da capo arias; a common perception is that opera seria is little more than a concert in costume. Handel varies this formula with accompanied recitatives, brief choruses, instrumental music, several short arias and cavatinas, as well as two duets. At its best, opera seria can display the gradual unfolding of psychological processes as a character works through the emotion of the moment. Some have argued that the slower pace can present the unfolding of changing emotional states in a more realistic fashion than later opera. In the end, it is an issue of personal taste.   

Samantha Clarke as Cleopatra and Hugh Cutting as Tolomeo (photograph by Brett Boardman)

The opera hews relatively closely to actual history, depicting Julius Caesar’s pursuit of the rebel Pompey to Egypt only to discover his head presented on a platter. He joined Cleopatra in the campaign against her co-regent brother, Ptolemy, in the Siege of Alexandria and later the Battle of the Nile. The emotional underpinnings of the various relationships in the opera are much more in the realm of conjecture.

The settings for opera of this period were highly ornate and elaborate, something that, with the best will in the world, cannot be said of the City Recital Hall. Director Neil Armfield observes: ‘It’s something of a challenge to produce Baroque opera, that apparently most artificial of theatrical forms, in the City Recital Hall, with its beautiful acoustic but total absence of stage machinery. There’s not even a curtain.’ However, he remarks: ‘from challenge comes invention’.

Armfield focuses on clarity in the relationships between characters while allowing the singers freedom to improvise within this framework. A large, semi-transparent pyramid on the side of the stage houses the orchestra, while the playing space is fully utilised with effective groupings of opposing factions, all aided by lighting by Damien Cooper. Attractive costumes by Dale Ferguson consist largely of contemporary garments in muted colours for the women, apart from a stunning dark blue dress for Cleopatra and generic army uniforms for the soldiers.

While the role of Caesar has remained limited to particular voice types, Cleopatra has been sung by a wide range of different soprano voices. Aside from Yvonne Kenny, two other distinguished Australian exponents have been Joan Sutherland and Emma Matthews (in the same Robert Helpmann production). In this performance, the role is embodied by Australian/British soprano Samantha Clarke, who has sung a wide range of roles in the more standard repertoire. Clarke has a substantial voice with a beautiful, lyrically warm quality and an alluring stage presence – a must for this most enigmatic of historical figures. If the extensive fioritura of the role is not always crystalline, this is a performance of great energy and commitment. The character revels in a wide range of emotions, one moment fiercely declamatory, the next coquettishly seductive, and everything in between.

The first twenty minutes of the second half stands out: Cleopatra’s popular aria V’adoro, pupille, saette d’amore (Beautiful eyes, love’s darts) is followed by Caesar’s Se in fiorito ameno prato (If in a lovely meadow of flowers a bird hides itself), with its delightful imitation bird calls from a solo violin, played with humorous enjoyment by Matthew Greco. This part of Julius Caesar is a fascinating, self-reflexive moment when opera’s awareness of its artificiality as an art form is most apparent. A group of players on the side of the stage accompanies Cleopatra’s ‘performance’ for Caesar, all supported by the orchestra at the back of the stage. Clarke captures the knowingness of the moment with exquisite tonal variation and a seamless line, while Caesar fully plays along with the charade: music as ‘performance’, as well as being the ambient fluid in which operatic characters exist.  

Caesar, the British countertenor Tim Mead, has established himself at the peak of what is a considerable number of successful international singers of this voice type. He possesses a rich and full sound and a tall, commanding stage presence, useful for embodying this famous historical figure, not to mention an impressive red beard! His arias provided many vocal highlights, none more so than the superbly majestic Non tacito e nascosto (The clever hunter moves in silence), with a powerful horn solo by Carla Blackwood.

His bitter rival Tolomeo, Hugh Cutting, is another British countertenor – there seems to be an endless supply of top-notch British exponents of the voice type. His is another career on the rise with upcoming performances at La Scala. It is a very different voice from that of Mead, perhaps not as voluptuous in tone quality, but with a focused and powerfully ringing tone. What can sometimes seem a tonal sameness in countertenor voices is certainly not the case here, the two voices provide fascinating vocal variation.

Mezzo Helen Sherman is a feisty Sesto, a pivotal role, particularly fine in the fiery aria Svegliatevi nel core (Awaken in my heart). She is well matched by fellow mezzo, Stephanie Dillon as Cornelia, though she lacks some of the vocal weight of the character. They both have several impressive arias, delivered with a sure sense of style and vocal aplomb, culminating in a heartbreaking duet. Providing a deep and sonorous voice of power and nuance in the conniving role of Achilla is bass-baritone Andrew O’Connor. Philip Barton as Curio reveals a young baritone with promise. Rounding out the soloists is countertenor Michael Burden as Nireno. Caesar surely lies in his future.

Conductor Erin Helyard at the keyboard, as always, produces a fine performance from the excellent period-instrument Orchestra of the Antipodes, which has accompanied virtually all Pinchgut performances for twenty years. It is refreshing to see the individual orchestra members given equal billing with the vocalists in the performance program, including fascinating details of their particular instruments.

Pinchgut have provided two excellent opera productions for Sydney audiences this year. Dido and Aeneas shone new light on this somewhat neglected, but important work, while Giulio Cesare is a vivid, full-blooded addition to their growing repertoire of Handel’s most outstanding operas, with two charismatic singers as the superb leads.

Julius Caesar (Pinchgut Opera) continues at the City Recital Hall in Sydney until 27 November 2024. Performance attended: November 21.