In all likelihood the most memorable aspect of Opera Ireland's winter season was always likely to have been the mere fact of the company's first staging of an opera by Handel, a belated recognition by Opera Ireland of the important place the composer's work has come to hold in the international opera repertoire today. And in the event, the new production of Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) holds together in ways the season's other production, of Verdi's Don Carlo, does not.
Giulio Cesare, with its readily identifiable characters (it's based on the story of Caesar and Cleopatra), succession of sharply-conceived arias, both dramatic and affecting, and lavish orchestration (including no less than four horns), is, understandably, the most popular of Handel's operas.
Elaine Padmore's new production is simple and unfussy, with frequent recourse to the creation of tableaux vivant around the principal characters. The spartan settings by Bruno Schwengl yield subtly-varied compositions of colour and space through the often saturated lighting of Adam Silverman.
There's an occasional indulgence in extravagant fancy - a Handel-like figure appears at a harpsichord for the "symphony" which Cleopatra plans to further her seduction of Caesar at the start of Act II - but the fabric of the whole is not upset as a result.
Soprano Regina Nathan's Cleopatra is a mixed success. She's slightly risible in her early preening, kittenish behaviour, and not quite in full rhythmic control either. But, by the time she reaches the familiar territory of Pianger≥ la sorte mia in Act III she's fully ready to deliver a moving account of the work's most famous aria.
Mezzo soprano Anna Burford's Caesar is altogether more sure in delivery, but expressively rather lighter than the role demands. At the other extreme is counter-tenor Artur Stefanowicz's Tolomeo, who flings himself with sometimes reckless impetuosity at the fearsome demands of a role originally conceived for a castrato.
The emotional centre of this particular production, however, seems to rest with bereaved mezzo sopranos. CΘcile van de Sant retains dignity in grief and further misfortune as Cornelia, widow of the murdered Pompeo, and Emer McGilloway, sometimes coltish in her youthfully interventionist agitation, impresses, too, as Pompeo's son, Sesto.
Noel Davies (using the edition of the music he prepared with Charles Mackerras for the English National Opera) keeps a generally tight rein on the RT╔CO in the pit, in what is likely to be remembered as a landmark production in Opera Ireland's history.
