GIULIO CESARE

Cover of 1724 version of Giulio Cesare manuscript.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto (commonly shortened to Giulio Cesare) is Handel’s most frequentlyperformed opera. It was his fifth full-length opera for the Royal Academy of Music. It was met with adoring audiences at the premiere in no small part due to the best orchestra, a librettist who specialized in the ancient material, the best castrato (Francesco Bernardi a.k.a “Il Senesino”), and a far longer period than the two to four weeks that Baroque composers normally had to produce a finished piece. These circumstances set the stage for a fully developed opera seria, with time to spare for rewrites and rearranging to create fully developed music and characters. It received 13 performances during its first run at the King’s Theatre in Haymarket, London, in February 1724, and was revived three times in Handel’s lifetime alone!

Nicolo Francesco Haym was Handel’s primary librettist while in London at the Academy where he wrote Giulio Cesare. Haym was a cellist and secretary for the Royal Academy of Music. He was appointed as secretary due to his enormous success in adapting Bononcini’s Camilla, the first Italian opera at Drury Lane in London, in 1706. Apart from his post at the Academy, he was an avid antiquarian who published many volumes on customs and cultures of ancient societies. He took to his work as librettist with dedication, as the subjects of the operas aligned closely to his passions in antiquity and coincided the growing availability of ancient Roman and Egyptian artifacts. Haym adapted Giulio Cesare for Handel from a 1677 work by Giacomo Bussani, with music by Antonio Sartorio. It was very common for librettists of

Engraving of prologue from Giulio Cesare, by Thomas Lediard, 1727.

the time to use an existing work. Haym’s version, however, is annotated with ancient sources and where he strayed from fact.

Subsequent productions continued well past Handel’s death. Over the years, arias were added and roles were sung by different voice types. Baroque music fell out of favor for a century or so until early 20 th century opera houses rediscovered his masterworks and brought them back into popular performance. The first time Giulio Cesare was revived in the 20 th century was in Germany in 1922, by Oskar Hagen who attempted to recreate it in the most authentic way possible.

Why, of all of Handel’s operas, is Giulio Cesare the most enduring? Perhaps it’s due to the familiarity of the subject matter. The story of the Roman falling in love with the Egyptian queen has been told and retold in many different media over the centuries.

DISCUSS:

How would you retell the story of Julius Caesar for today’s audiences through music and theater? What would it sound like? What would the costumes look like? Where might it be set? FIERCE WOMEN