When director David McVicar unveiled his production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne in 2005, the effect was seismic. How dare he turn Handel’s greatest opera into “Carry on up the Nile”? His response to the furore was that entertainment was “not a dirty word”, and thus McVicar gave audiences licence to ignore the purists , and to revel in his show’s unabashed and seamless marriage of high tragedy and camp comedy. Now it’s back in its fourth revival.
The plot is loosely based on history. Cesare and his Roman army are colonising Egypt, but backstage there are murder plots and seductions galore, all running in parallel. Egyptian co-regent Cleopatra lays amorous siege to Cesare, while angry young Sesto, encouraged by his mother Cornelia, is bent on avenging the murder of his father Pompey by the other Egyptian co-regent Tolomeo (Cleopatra’s brother), who’s got the hots for Cornelia.
McVicar brings the action forward to the British takeover of Egypt in 1882, but the model ships that sail across Robert Jones’s charming little backdrop suggest updating that runs throughout the 20 th century. Is this some discreet political top-spin? Handel’s plot switches constantly between two polarities: frivolity and sleaze in the Egyptian ruling class, and the fateful consequences of Pompey’s severed head being ceremonially flourished as a spoil of war. Sesto’s passion for revenge triggers the whole course of the drama, and, thanks to the starry cast McVicar.
