Handel, George Frideric

Handel - Giulio Cesare (Glyndebourne Opera Festival 2006)

There's a chance that purists will be very unhappy with director David McVicar's production of this Baroque masterpiece; there's also an equal chance that they'll be so vastly entertained that all criticisms will be beside the point. Updated to the years before World War I, Caeser's troops are British soldiers come to colonize Egypt, the latter being a place filled with exoticisms in the form of acres of billowing silk, flashy costumes, and full-blown song and dance numbers a la Bollywood (featuring sex-kitten Cleopatra and her minions). It's not only funny/campy, it also makes a certain internal sense. The razzle-dazzle is laid aside for the personal tragedy of Cornelia and Sesto (Patricia Bardon and Angelika Kirchschlager, respectively)--here portrayed as a beaten-down woman in a pathetic rage and a son on the verge of insanity--and for Caeser's and Cleopatra's more introspective moments. Caeser is mezzo Sarah Connelly, in firm voice and with the bearing of an emperor. Cleopatra is the 25-year-old American Daniele de Niese, ravishing in person and voice, with charisma, nerve, and talent in equal proportions. Countertenor Christopher Dumaux' bitchy-queen Tolomeo is remarkable, and the Achilles of bass Christopher Maltman is menacing. William Christie leads the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with great spirit and dramatic thrust, and the production values---subtitles in major European languages and English, stereo and surround sound, and picture---are ideal. Extras include interviews with the director and singers and an up-close look at Danielle de Niese. This is a fascinating, grand entertainment that may just make new friends for Baroque opera. ---Robert Levine

Handel - Theodora / Peter Sellars · William Christie · Upshaw, Hunt, Daniels, Croft · Glyndebourne Opera

After an overture played on baroque period instruments, this opera about the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire opens with a televised press conference by the business-suited Roman governor of Antioch. This paradox epitomizes a bold and spectacularly successful interpretation that merges modern visuals with 18th-century music performed in period style.

The music (glorious, vintage Handel) is entrusted to William Christie, one of the most respected living conductors of early music. His phenomenal cast is musically and theatrically right on target. The staging, by Peter Sellars, has Roman legionaries garbed as a SWAT team with automatic weapons. The Roman governor is a totally political animal with a drinking problem. Dawn Upshaw and the amazing David Daniels, Christian victims, are executed not in a pit of lions but strapped to tables for lethal injections.

This treatment not only gives dramatic impact to music that began life as an oratorio; it universalizes the subject into an indictment of any government that persecutes minorities. --Joe McLellan

For his 1996 Glyndebourne staging, radical American director Peter Sellars takes George Frideric Handel's penultimate English oratorio - a tale of self-sacrificial love between a Christian virgin and a Roman imperial bodyguard in fourth-century, enemy-occupied Antioch - and, by resetting it in modern-day America, transforms it into a timeless parable of spiritual resistance to tyranny and persecution. Starring Dawn Upshaw, David Daniels, Frode Olsen, Richard Croft, and Lorraine Hunt.

Handel: Water Music; Music for the Royal Fireworks [DVD Audio]

Handel - Ariodante / Hallenberg, Cherici, Vandoni Iorio, Nesi, Lepore, Stains, Prato, Il Compresso Brocco, Curtis, Pascoe (Spoleto Festival 2007)

Handel - Rodelinda / Antonacci, Scholl, Streit, Chiummo, Winter, Stefanowicz, Christie, Glyndebourne Opera

Jean-Marie Villégier's stylish production of Rodelinda sets Handel's tale of royal exile and fidelity in the silent movie era. The composer's ravishing music is perfectly set off by the sophisticated glamour and visual daring that characterized the birth of cinema. With Anna Caterina Antonacci as Rodelinda, Kurt Streit as Grimoaldo, Umberto Chiummo as Garibaldo, Andreas Scholl as Bertarido. Glyndebourne Festival Opera..

"Jean-Marie Villégier's brilliant, unnerving production ... A great show - don't miss it" THE GUARDIAN

Handel - Serse / Rasmussen, Piau, Bayrakdarian, Bardon, Hallenberg, Peirone, Lippi, Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Dresden Opera

Handel - Messiah / Emma Kirkby, Judith Nelson, Carolyn Watkinson, Paul Elliott, David Thomas, Christopher Hogwood, Academy of Ancient Music, Choir of Westminster Abbey

In Handel's day this best-loved of all oratorios was performed by fewer than forty instrumentalists and a chorus, less than thirty strong, of boy trebles and men. That is the tradition to which Christopher Hogwood has returned in his performances with the Academy of Ancient Music. Members of the Academy all play instruments of the period or accurate modern copies.

In this recording the choruses are sung by boy trebles and male altos, tenors and basses, members of the Choir of Westminster Abbey. The soloists improvise embellishments in the arias and, in certain cases, join in the singing of the choruses, just as they would have done 240 years ago.The recording takes full advantage not only of Westminster Abbey's fine acoustic qualities, but also of the incomparable architectural splendour of the surroundings.

Handel's Last Chance

Handel - Alcina / Naglestad, Coote, Schneiderman, Romei, Hacker (Staatsoper Stuttgart 1999)

Handel - Giulio Cesare

Peter Sellars's daring and novel adaptation of Handel's opera Giulio Cesare

previously released on Laser Disc and VHS is now available on DVD!

Though sung in the original Italian, Giulio Cesare is relocated in the

unspecified future in the Middle East. Cesare is the unquestioned leader

of a major world power who visits the Empire's number one global

trouble spot. Ptolemy is a 14-year-old "self styled local potentate"

and Cleopatra his beautiful and spoiled elder sister.

Included in this DVD are the English subtitles supplied by director Peter

Sellars himself, specifically created to match and enhance his personal vision of this opera. CAST LIST JEFFREY GALL Giulio Cesare SUSAN LARSON Cleopatra MARY WESTBROOK-GEHA Cornelia LORRAINE HUNT Sesto JAMES MADDALENA Achilla DREW MINTER Tolomeo CHERYL COBB Nirena HERMAN HILDEBRAND Curio Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden Craig Smith, conductor Directed by Peter Sellars