Photos from LA Opera "Julius Caesar," shown here in
Australia in 1994, will be in Los Angeles Feb. 23 through March
10.
By John Mangum
Daily Bruin Contributor
Handel’s opera “Julius Caesar” may be almost
300 years old, but it’s more popular now than ever.
Opera companies everywhere seem to be mounting new productions
of this masterwork. The opera has even managed to strong-arm its
way into the crowd of warhorses by Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and
Mozart that hold sway at most of the world’s major opera
houses.
And now, “Julius Caesar” has made its way to Los
Angeles. Beginning this evening, Los Angeles Opera will stage the
work for the first time in a production directed by Francisco
Negrin. According to the director, audiences devour Handel’s
operas with an even more voracious appetite than they do the
standard fare.
“They’re always involved in them in a way that
they’re never involved in 19th-century opera,” Negrin
said during an interview from the L.A. Opera House.
“They’re actually completely engaged by the story.
They’re rooting for the characters. They’re laughing.
They’re crying. They’re asking for encores.
They’re getting truly excited by what’s
happening.”
“Giulio Cesare in Egitto,” to use the work’s
original Italian title, will have seven performances in Italian,
with an English translation projected above the stage. It premiered
in London in 1724, during the heyday of baroque opera.
The plot surrounds Caesar, who has just defeated his rival
Pompey in Greece and has followed him to Egypt. At the urging of
Pompey’s wife Cornelia and son Sextus, Caesar decides to make
peace with Pompey. When Caesar lands in Egypt, an emissary from
Ptolemy and Cleopatra, who are joint rulers of the kingdom of the
Nile, bring the Roman leader gifts ““ one of which is
Pompey’s head.
This sets a drama of conflict, love and intrigue in motion.
Cleopatra makes a pact with Caesar to off her brother, and Ptolemy
decides to kill Caesar and claim Cornelia as his prize. Murder,
betrayal and attempted suicide are just a few of the dramatic
twists along the work’s path to a happy ending.
 Handel’s opera "Julius Caesar" will be performed by Los
Angeles Opera seven times at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
starting tonight. “You are trying to convey a sense of how
the universe functions, and that universe is a very varied place
where love can be conveyed with violent passion or with tiny
sensual tenderness, where you can laugh one instant and have
something really horrendous happen to you the next,” Negrin
said of his duties as director of the opera. “It’s a
true vision of life in all of its variety and energy.”
The variety captured by 18th-century baroque opera, this attempt
to encompass the universe in one grand gesture, presents a
challenge to any stage director who wants to tackle a work like
“Julius Caesar.”
The director must close the 250-year gap between an audience at
the beginning of the 21st century and a theater piece from the
middle of the 18th and thereby make the universe of the baroque
something compelling for us. Negrin said his production does this
by setting the work outside of time and using various aspects of
the stage to bring baroque conventions to life for the
audience.
“The aesthetic of the show is modern, but it’s not
updated in any way,” Negrin said. “It’s like
it’s in legend-land ““ actually, it’s a bit
Hollywoody, which suits L.A. very well.”
“The attitude of the show is completely baroque,” he
continued. “We use baroque conventions, things like the fact
that action never stops, that scene changes happen in view, that
there is a certain amount of fun to be had with the settings and
that the settings are symbolic of emotional change in the
characters.”
For the performances here, L.A. Opera has assembled an extremely
promising cast whose singing should be able to do justice to
Negrin’s vision of the music.
At the head of the cast are three countertenors making their
L.A. Opera debuts ““ David Daniels as Caesar, Bejun Mehta as
Ptolemy and David Walker as Cleopatra’s confidant Nirenus
““ all of whom have been generating impressive reviews with
their performances elsewhere.
The countertenor is the highest male voice and in the 18th
century, composers actually used castrati ““ men who had been
castrated before puberty to preserve their high singing voices
““ for such heroic roles. Since the mid-20th century, however,
men have been learning how to sing in this register with everything
intact, often with powerful and thrilling results.
“Countertenors are everywhere now, and so they should
be,” Negrin said. “There is a reason why a different
voice should sing the hero and the young man. The young man should
be done by a woman because it’s an unformed masculinity and
the hero should be a special voice ““ in 19th-century opera,
it would be the tenor ““ and what more special voice could you
get than an incredibly powerful high male voice?”
So, for Negrin, baroque opera can trump 19th-century opera even
when it comes to singers. “Julius Caesar” can be an
all-encompassing musical, dramatic experience and Negrin’s
production aims to convey that.
“It’s more fun to watch one of these operas than a
19th-century opera which has blinders on and is going for one main
message,” the director said. “Here, the message is
“˜Look around you. The world is a beautiful
place.'”
OPERA: L.A. Opera presents Handel’s
“Julius Caesar” for seven performances, Feb. 23 through
March 10 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Ticket prices range from
$28 to $148. Student and senior rush tickets are available one hour
before curtain for $20, subject to availability. For more
information, call (213) 972-8001 or visit www.laopera.org.