Giulio Cesare in Egitto (concertante)

Linke Wienzeile 6

1060 Wien

 

In the early 1720s, the composers George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Bononcini were fighting an almost no-holds-barred battle to win the patronage of opera audiences. That Handel eventually emerged victorious is probably due first and foremost to Giulio Cesare in Egitto, first performed in 1724. Together with his librettist Nicola Francesco Haym he had strategically spent a long time planning the opening evening, giving himself nine months to write the opera – an unprecedented length of time for Handel. His meticulousness was rewarded: Giulio Cesare in Egitto is still considered one of Handel’s most successful operas today. Against the backdrop of the Roman Empire’s campaign of conquest in Egypt it tells the story of the intensive flirting that went on between the general Julius Caesar and the future Pharaoh Cleopatra. While Cesare is given both warlike and loving passages to sing, the self-assured and flirtatious Cleopatra grows into a worthy queen. The inventiveness of this score is unique even in the context of Handel’s extensive oeuvre. In the two main roles, Jakub Józef Orliński and Sabine Devieilhe form a spectacular pairing.

Concert performance in Italian with German surtitles

(Source: theater-wien.at)