Giulio Cesare in Egitto

• Emmanuelle Haïm Musical Direction and Harpsichord
  
• Dmitri Tcherniakov Direction and Stage
• Elena Zaytseva Costumes
• Gleb Filshtinsky Light
• Tatiana Werestchagina Dramaturgy

• Christophe Dumaux Giulio Cesare 
• Olga Kulchynska Cleopatra 
• Lucile Richardot Cornelia 
• Federico Fiorio Sesto 
• Yuriy Mynenko Tolomeo 
• Andrey Zhilikhovsky Achilla 
• Jake Ingbar Nireno 

• Bachchor Salzburg 
• Michael Schneider Choir Rehearsal
• Le Concert d’Astrée 

The gruesome image that presents itself right at the beginning of Handel's opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724) would be worth a trigger warning, given today's sensitivities. After the welcoming chorus for Caesar, the solemn declarations of peace, a severed human head appears - the head of Caesar's political opponent, the Senate's favorite Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

Pompey's silent head causes the others to speak. First and foremost Caesar himself. What exactly is the trigger for his outrage? The political assassination itself or the brutality with which the murder was committed? Or the fact that someone other than Caesar himself decided Pompey's fate, that death snatched his rival - as Cato later did - from his power disguised as mercy? Or does the tangible presence of a human body part destroy the sublime vision of victory? Although Shakespeare's Brutus views the tyrannicide as "a dish fit for the gods, not [...] a carcass fit for hounds," the English playwright's relentless tragedy shows how delusional and futile the efforts to aestheticize the murder are, confronting the viewer with the bloody shreds of the toga.

The gruesome image of Pompey's head is brutally impressed on our perception, as a frame in the sense of Judith Butler. As we look, we reflect on the terrifying topicality of a political assassination. Is this life deplorable? Can murder be rationalized? This image determines our perspective: not only on the love story of Caesar and Cleopatra, but also on the history of the enmity that destroyed Rome, that is, the entire world as it was then known. Lucan explains the reason in Pharsalia: "Caesar could not recognize anyone's superiority, Pompey could not tolerate an equal." Neither of the two great men who made Rome famous could give in: a dangerous zero-sum game that (as René Girard has shown) stems from mimetic rivalry, where the aim is to win and not to compromise. Such rivalries, however, formed the basis of Roman society with its cursus honorum, but also of Elizabethan homosocial society and of Great Britain under the Hanoverians. It is no coincidence that English culture was so keen to reflect itself in ancient Rome and to grasp its present, its heroes and villains through Roman history and its protagonists.

Irreconcilable conflicts determine the dramaturgy of Giulio Cesare - a constant struggle in which everyone is exposed to existential threats in unexpected situations. There is no safe zone. Cleopatra also enters the male world of power competition and uses gender as a weapon that gives her an advantage in this unruly struggle. It is revealing that Caesar's aria "Va tacito e nascosto", which sets out the predator's modus operandi, originally belonged to Cleopatra in Handel's manuscript - the two are equal in this competition and use the same techniques.

The London Royal Academy of Music, for which Handel wrote Giulio Cesare, his fifth opera (and one of his most successful), was already structurally opposed to one-sided political engagement. Among the co-founders, directors and subscribers of this joint-stock company were both pro-government and dissident Whigs and Tories. Handel and his librettist Haym spoke to their audiences across party lines and revealed the deep humanity of their characters, each of whom transcends the boundaries of the role set by tradition: They were concerned with overcoming the very spirit of hostility that, more than all political differences, threatens to destroy our world, just as it once destroyed Rome.
For director Dmitri Tcherniakov and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, this is their first joint production at the Salzburg Festival. Passionate commitment and uncompromising creativity make the collaboration between the two (which has already resulted in the unique Gluck project Iphigénie en Aulide — Iphigénie en Tauride in Aix-en-Provence in 2024) equally exciting for everyone involved and for the audience.