The overture has come to an end, the curtain rises, and we hear a bright, feminine voice, drawing strength from a character whose costume is meant to give us an image of the hero. Let’s take a look at the libretto, is this disguised white-clad figure an Amazon, or perhaps the same person from the world of the mad? No, not at all. It is Alexander the Great! How is that? Alexander the Great? (… ) We will finally hear the choir of heroes. What? Sopranos and altos! So, did Alexander the Great conquer the world with a throng of women [1]?
Johann Adolph Scherbe, the author of these words (from 1737), clearly did not like castratos, because – indeed – seeing a frail man endowed with an extraordinarily high vocal range of a hero, who doubles and triples to create the semblance of masculinity, or on the contrary, does not exert himself too much and stands still, presenting all the attendees at the performance with vocal possibilities, can be discouraging. So much so that in the twenty-first century, a castrato is not found on any opera stage. Directors are left to choose and select from the available material. One can choose a man whose singing will, however, be imperfect at many moments or dress a woman for the needs of the performance. In some cases, this leads to lamentable aesthetic consequences. What to do, however, to make the opera successful? It seems that the collaborating directors – judging by the list of roles played – have a quick answer to this question. It is necessary to hire the British mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly [2]. In her operatic repertoire, we find many female roles, but in memory, the male characters stand out best: Romeo in Capuleti e Montecchi by Berlioz, Nero in L'incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi, Sesto in La clemenza di Tito by Mozart, and Caesar in Giulio Cesare in Egitto by Handel. Where does such enthusiasm for a woman in the role of a Roman Emperor come from? An analysis of the hero himself will show.
At first, it is hard to orient oneself, everything seems to fit, the age – In 48 BC, Caesar is 52 years old – a vigorous gait, energy, and self-confidence. We know from sources that Caesar:
Was said to be tall, had a fair complexion, slender limbs, a somewhat too full face, black and bright eyes, enjoyed good health until his last years, when he suddenly began to suffer from fainting spells, and also experienced nightmares during sleep. Twice he was also diagnosed with epilepsy during his activities. He was excessively concerned about his body, so he not only groomed himself carefully and shaved [3], but even had himself plucked of unnecessary hair, which some reproached him for. He was extremely pained by the ugliness of his baldness, which is why he usually combed his hair [4].
But characterization is not everything. It is necessary to realize that there is a thirty-year difference between Caesar and Cleopatra. There was a common and consistent belief that he possessed an exceptionally sensual temperament [5], and – more importantly – seduced many women. And Cleopatra would certainly be a very exotic conquest for him. Their first meeting, after Pompey’s funeral, when Cleopatra presents herself as her servant Lidia [6], is strongly suggestive, although the libretto is not particularly subtle here. Caesar uses the worn comparison of a woman’s face to a flower.
E la tua chioma i cori. Non Ǐ sě vago e bello il fior nel prato, quant'Ǐ vago e gentile il tuo bel volto. D'un fiore il pregio a quello solo vien dato, ma tutto un vago aprile in te raccolto.The entire erotic tension of this scene arises thanks to fleeting closeness and infrequent, but therefore explicit touch. In decisive moments, it is discharged by the unexpected arrival of Sextus, the dropping of glasses (to the delight of the audience), or the laughter of the soldiers.
Let’s be honest: Cleopatra does not immediately love Caesar, on the other hand, it works identically.We work through a lot, you know, a kind of report there is between an older man and a younger woman, because Cleopatra is a younger woman, and Caesar, you know, he’s nearer fifties. He has kind of, you know, he’s whore oriented. He is oriented to women obviously but he is on an age where there is a different feeling for the man that age to young woman. So that was a lot of great work we spend to really explore that [7].
If we omit the other characters and other plot threads, the only action of the dictator would be the entrance to the queen’s bedroom. Several times he is encouraged by Cleopatra, and let’s add that Connolly can embody a man enchanted and even more determined. Evidence of this is the entire scene 8 in the second act of Julius Caesar, which for the singer herself was a huge challenge:
It has been an interesting challenge to find a masculinity that works for me and my physicalization well as my vocalization. The interesting bit for me was when Cleopatra lying on the bed and he is remarking (Caesar) how amazing and beautiful she is, and is very poetic and beautiful how. I wish I could possess her. I wish I could she be my wife. And the music is lovely main key in this all romantic. And David didn't want me, David McVicar didn't want me to be romantic at all. He wanted me to be quite lascivious, and quite possessive, and detached. And that for me quite difficult to find a way of looking on Danielle more than object, a sex object rather than object who is poetic beauty [8].
Enormous work that Connolly put into creating Caesar is emphasized by Danielle de Niese – the operatic Cleopatra:Sarah is a wonderful woman, who…you really can't believe - how much she has mastered the art of being a man. It's really hard to believe because when you see her in real life she is not somebody whose very male oriented. And so, when we get on stage together she is capable of really making me forget that she is a woman. Her body language and everything changes[9].
One-time viewing of Julius Caesar from Glyndebourne does not allow for catching all the moments that influence the assessment of the partnership relationship between the lovers.
The way Connolly and de Niese interpret this historical romance requires a lot of professionalism from them, and indeed one can often forget about the lack of gender difference. Nevertheless, even the best actors would not be able to turn the opera into a masterpiece if its characters were colorless and devoid of life. In the times of “atrophy of narrative” in opera, Handel and Haym wanted to tell human stories. Therefore, one should analyze Julius Caesar as a well-constructed drama, whose structure consists of several elements. Among them, the main ones are the plot (Aristotle in Poetics granted it a superior role) and the hero, whose status changes with the development of the drama. According to some critics, the hero would be a subordinate instance to the plot, which Manfred Pfister explains with a specific model of existence of a character, which contrary to the feelings of the audience, treating it as a real person, is a hermetically closed instance, static and destined only to exist in a given dramatic environment, i.e., it is unjustified to ask about the possibility of its actions in another situation [10]. (One cannot, for example, ask how Caesar would behave in Rinaldo's place.) Opponents of this thesis argue that a well-constructed hero can be imagined in another situational context. It looks like a dispute about the heliocentric theory, in which the plot is once the earth around which all the characters revolve, and at other times the characters are the plot's sun, because the theme is doomed to revolve around the characters, although the most important thing is that each of them can be described. However, for the description to be accurate, it is necessary to use many components of characterization [11]. One of them is the parameter of length: that is, the development of the character, depth – the relationship between the character's behavior and its immanent experience. In sequence, attention is drawn to the static or dynamic nature of the hero [12]. But that is still not everything. Characters existing in the world of the work can function as personifications, stage types, and individuals. If one carefully traces the libretto of Julius Caesar, finding an example to support each of these constructions does not seem difficult. The main hero does not belong to static characters, although his characteristic way of being, impressions, and mentality do not change. However, his approach to love changes, and that is fundamental for the opera. Moreover, Caesar is a deep hero – capable of great expression, however, he is not – perhaps contrary to expectations – a scenic individual, but a type. He does not present a single trait, but a complex of psychologically and sociologically conditioned traits: he is a lover when he sings Non Ǐ sě vago e bello, a warrior Al lampo dell'armi, and even an artist Se in fiorito ameno prato. Nevertheless, Caesar does not exceed the assigned type conditioning, because Cleopatra does, thus being the operatic individual. It is really hard to determine what Cleopatra actually is. She has no educated sense of feeling, she only knows that she wants to rule. Until the end of the second act, Caesar is attracted to her only as an influential man. He does not know how to react when he observes Cornelia, whose husband has just been buried. She must be surprised by her outburst of love, seeing that Caesar wants to go out to meet the murderers.
Se pitâo di me non senti, giusto ciel, io morirò. Tu da pace a' miei tormenti, o quest'alma spirerò.This captivating aria of expressiveness is a signal for the viewer of the change that has occurred in Cleopatra's way of feeling. However it may sound – she cannot imagine life without Caesar, and if he had not burst into the chamber, informing the audience that he had forced the door to save her from suicidal death, (Forzai l'ingresso a tua salvezza, oh cara! [13]) it is unknown how Julius Caesar [14] would have ended.
In Handel's opera, the characters are more. Each of them the composer and librettist devoted much attention. McVicar, meanwhile, returned the opera to living-multidimensional people. He showed that suspending the accepted form of referentiality can add to the eighteenth-century work attractiveness and lightness, and at the same time deprive it of the imperative of decency. Jan Kott, recalling all the Shakespearean stage interpretations he had the opportunity to see, expressed the belief that “every era has the Shakespeare it deserves [15].” The same thought can be applied in the case of G. F. Handel.
Monika Gromala[3] McVicar provides us with the pleasure of Caesar's careful grooming as he prepares to meet Cleopatra in her bedroom, singing Se in fiorito ameno prato (Act II, Scene 2)
[4] Suetonius, op. cit., Book 1, 45. [5] See Suetonius, op. cit., Book 1, 50. [6] Act I, Scene 7.[7] Transcript of an interview with Danielle de Niese conducted after the premiere in Glyndebourne in 2005, attached to the DVD Giulio Cesare – Handel (Glyndebourne Festival)
[8] Transcript of an interview with Sarah Connolly conducted after the premiere in Glyndebourne in 2005, attached to the DVD Giulio Cesare – Handel (Glyndebourne Festival)
[9] Danielle de Niese, interview. [10] See Wojciech Baluch Małgorzata Sugiera Joanna Zająć, Discourse, Position and Gender in Drama, Kraków 2002, pp. 198 -201. [11] Ibid., pp. 210 – 213.[12] Edward Morgan Foster somewhat expands the parameters of staticity and dynamicity by introducing a distinction between mono and multidimensional character. See W. Baluch, op. cit. p. 215. In Julius Caesar, the character of Ptolemy is typically monodimensional, exhibiting a single essential characteristic – cruelty, moreover, he is a static character. In his case, we speak of accumulation, not development. (From Scene to Scene, Ptolemy is more audacious) In contemporary theater, a typically monodimensional character is often introduced to ridicule some attitude – and indeed – in McVicar's staging, Ptolemy is a caricature of a ruler. (And it is enough to listen to the audience's repeated laughter to be convinced that he fulfills this role.)
[13] Act III, Scene 7.[14] Obviously, Caesar must have burst into the chamber at the right time, just as he must have sung the aria of revenge Al lampo dell'armi, although the murderers were basically standing at the door, ready to enter as soon as Caesar finished. Fortunately, the laws of physics are suspended in opera.
[15] J. Kott, Gender of Rosalinda, Kraków 1992, p. 10.
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