Enlightened Caesar Settles For Elegance Rather Than Excitement
The Age
Monday December 4, 2006
OPERA REVIEW: GIULIO CESARE Opera Australia. State Theatre, until December 15
FRANCISCO Negrin's production of Handel's masterpiece inhabits a neverland somewhere between the Nile and Hollywood.It is a richly eclectic vision where the deliciously villainous Tolomeo (Christopher Field) threatens his sister Cleopatra (Emma Matthews) with a Luger but is polished off by his nemesis Sesto (Sally-Anne Russell) with a well-aimed sword to the crotch.The plot, adapted from Plutarch, dramatises Caesar (Tobias Cole) in pursuit of Pompey in Egypt, his meeting with Pompey's widow Cornelia (Catherine Carby) and son Sesto as pawns in the game. It is very much a work of the Enlightenment in which liberal kingship is eulogised and the anatomy of the emotions is vivisected while politics and brilliant singing are analogous in their technical mastery. There are two knockout scenes that define the power struggle and its subversion by desire. In the first, Caesar meets Tolomeo at a long table in a hall full of muscle-bound guards in which the threat of assassination hangs in the air like the smell of nitroglycerine. Tolomeo resembles a parody of a contemporary Islamic dictator. Caesar literally turns the tables on him with the help of Cleopatra's eunuchs, who haunt the opera like the corps de ballet from The Bald Swan Lake.The second scene occurs when Cleopatra seduces Caesar, appearing before him nude as she bathes in ass's milk. But here the production strikes difficulties. Initially, Matthews plays the young queen as an impish gamine. In the bathhouse and in a subsequent scene where she comes on like a 1940s film star, she doesn't make the transition from Lolita to mature seductress. Nor is there any chemistry between her and Caesar. Cole looks and sounds much too young for the part. He lacks the patina of experience. He has a fine countertenor with some beautiful upper notes. But there is no charisma. Conducting Orchestra Victoria, Richard Gill nurses the principals for the long haul. The result is beauty of tone rather than dramatic excitement, as though caution is the predominant objective. But Handel would have it otherwise.Matthews sings with the dazzling brilliance of a diamond but it is indicative of the problem she has with the character that her best moments aren't sensual at all. They are the two arias - for Caesar's fate and her own fall from grace - in which she sings with passion and sincerity of feeling. Corby's Cornelia fares much better because of the laments given her in beautiful elegiac mode. The pace picked up in the second half and as a result Russell's Sesto and Richard Anderson's dark and menacing turncoat, Achilla, fared much better. But the persistent impression is of a cool elegance rather than illicit delights.
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