Last year it came, it was seen, it conquered. And now David McVicar’s thunderously entertaining production of Handel’s opera has come back to Glyndebourne, with its zig-zagging wit and seriousness, its red-coated Brits barging into the Middle East, and all-round theatrical splendour.
With a cast substantially changed McVicar’s revival is no carbon copy. Different emphases, different strengths. And with Cesare, a different sex. The switch from Sarah Connolly’s mezzo to David Daniels’s counter-tenor affects more than vocal timbre. With Connolly’s bumptious interpretation, Cesare’s singing, acting and love-making carried a dangerous edge; Daniels’s master of the world is gentler, softer, less the strutting, over-reaching dictator. First-night nerves probably bit in, as with Sara Mingardo, whose voice came initially bottled and capped in her British stage debut as Cornelia.
Yet in each case the cap was removed. Muted as a warmonger, Daniels throbbed beautifully as the desolate lover of Act III’s Aure, deh, per pietà, heart audibly breaking among the battlefield wreckage. And in Act II, the prospect of harem lust with Tolomeo frightened Mingardo into full bloom. The impetuous Sesto of Katarina Karnéus will no doubt be ratcheted up a notch, though she’s already eloquent, and undeniably funny shell-shocked in black as the glasses chink in the final scene. Lawrence Zazzo’s immature, swaggering Tolomeo is funny throughout; while you can smell the danger in Nathan Berg’s Achilla.
What doesn’t change is the sex-kitten panache of Danielle de Niese’s Cleopatra, or the servant quiverings of Rachid Ben Abdeslam. On opening night, the stage business had a slight by-the-numbers feel, but there’s no denying that Danielle de Niese is a star, with a voice and body that never tire through every wink and gyration. Even offstage she’s a busy bee, furiously changing wigs and costumes; the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, fiddling and blowing for Emmanuelle Haïm with gorgeous élan and peerless horns, are at least spared that.
The altered sexual dynamics do simplify and tame, there’s no doubt. But McVicar’s brilliant fusion of music and theatre, seriousness and fun, still produces a firecracker. Scrounge for tickets immediately.
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