Giulio Cesare assessment – live performance staging with a variety of elegant, and ridiculous, moments

There’s a passage on the finish of Act 1 of Handel’s Giulio Cesare when a mom and son sing in combination, unaccompanied, united through loss. In this no-frills live performance staging, mezzo-sopranos Beth Taylor (Cornelia) and Paula Murrihy (Sesto, a trouser function) confronted every different, slightly projecting, their vocal strains – locked in sighing parallel thirds – ringing completely true.

It used to be some of the powerfully intense moments in a efficiency that ranged from the elegant to the ridiculous. Also elegant: countertenor Christophe Dumaux’s lucid, liquid ornamentation as Caesar admits he has fallen for “Lydia” (Cleopatra in hide), getting into aggressive musical discussion with a solo violin and shrugging at a flurry of musical leaps he used to be by no means going to mimic. Or his strange regulate of a unmarried unaccompanied sustained be aware initially of his heartfelt aria within the ultimate act, shaping an achingly sluggish crescendo and decrescendo in some way that used to be little in need of bewitching. Or John Holiday’s compelling flip as Cleopatra’s brother Ptolemy, his countertenor versatile, his ornamentation nimble. Or the English Concert beneath creative director Harry Bicket – at all times full of life, at all times neat, by no means flamboyant – whose string tone used to be heat or frozen because the emotional temperature demanded, the horns burnished, the occasional woodwind solos elegantly formed.

At the other finish of the spectrum used to be the illusion of Achilles (baritone Morgan Pearse) wearing a Waitrose bag, from which he produced the plot’s all-important bloodied head to thrilled giggles from the auditorium. Later – now mortally wounded – he organized himself onstage with a smile on the target audience. Meanwhile, after Ptolemy’s loss of life, Holiday picked himself up, dusted himself down and hoiked his trousers earlier than strolling off. And within the absence of “staging” past that plastic bag, an urn and a plastic knife, there used to be a large number of dramatic strolling: striding and shuffling, a couple of tentative steps and the occasional full-pelt sprint.

Some of this gave the impression mannered and self-conscious along an unequivocally world-class musical efficiency. The consistent motion off and on degree additionally step by step started to pall. But one standout flip negotiated the speedy switches between carry-on comedy and searing tragedy conveniently. Louise Alder’s Cleopatra handled the degree like a way runway, her first aria a heady cocktail of air of secrecy and self assurance, crooning and ferocious coloratura. Yet it used to be her later sincerity that hit house above all: strains sustained with tenderness and poise, her ornamentation exquisitely swish – all completely compelling.