Ariens 931016 S-12 User Manual download pdf (Page 9)

tossed in Anastasia Robinson as Cornelia and went for broke with Durastanti as Sesto. This

is the real royal fireworks.

Yes, there are Cornelia and Sesto, captive and abused by Cleopatra’s wicked brother

Tolomeo, but they are part of what is decidedly a sub-plot. They love the murdered

Pompeo, but it is the love of the faithful wife and the dutiful son that animates their arias,

not that of the kindling fire of sexual desire.

Caesar bestrides the narrow world like a Colossus and he and Cleopatra bestride the

opera: each of them is given eight arias and two accompanied recitatives, as well as two

duets to share. This is almost half of the music in an opera that has eight characters. No

emotion was foreign to Handel, but his most passionate love was reserved for – well – for

passionate love. The breathtaking and entirely mutual attraction that surges out of the arias

and duets makes – at least to those of us who are True Believers – much of the huffing

and puffing of other composers sound coarse.

Anyone who listens to this opera and allows its endless delights to penetrate the deepest

reaches of their spirit will feel no surprise at the ease with which Handel achieved this.

What must surprise them is the fact that it was, save for occasional performances, virtually

for gotten for almost two centuries.

And then New York and Beverly Sills and an explosion of enthusiasm and interest; and

then Munich in 1994 when Giulio Cesare was presented at the Bayerische Staatsoper in

a production that brought the audience to its feet with shouted approval and dissent

and, after far too long a time, put Handel back where he belongs, on our stages and in

our hearts.

Donna Leon verließ mit 23 Jahren New

Jersey, wo sie 1942 geboren wurde, um

in Perugia und Siena weiterzustudieren.

Seit 1965 lebt sie ständig im Ausland,

sie arbeitete als Reiseleiterin in Rom, als

Werbetexterin in London sowie als Leh-

rerin an amerikanischen Schulen in der

Schweiz, im Iran, in China und Saudi-

Arabien. Seit 1981 wohnt und arbeitet

Donna Leon in Venedig. Commissario

Brunetti machte sie weltberühmt.

Donna Leon left New Jersey, where she

was born in 1942, at the age of 23, to

continue her studies in Perugia and

Siena. Since 1965, she has lived abroad

continuously, working as a travel guide in

Rome, as a copywriter in London and as

a teacher at American schools in Switzer-

land, Iran, China and Saudi-Arabia. Since

1981, Donna Leon has lived and worked

in Venice. Commissario Brunetti made

her world-famous.

Handel was not the only composer who was compelled to give her a voice. Hasse wrote

a serenata in which her part was sung by – are you sitting down? – Farinelli, while that of

Antony was sung by the contralto Vittoria Tesi. Massenet could resist neither Cleopatra’s

dissolute reputation nor the lure of the asp and placed the final scene of his opera in

Cleopatra’s tomb. Having sent a false report of her death to Antony, Cleopatra is stunned

when her dying lover is carried in. Believing her dead, he has stabbed himself, convinced

that life without her is meaningless, and upon his death, she bares her breast and offers it

to the asp. And where the soprano who could resist this one?

The twenty-five-year-old Berlioz had a try at telling Cleopatra’s story in his third, and un-

successful, attempt to win the Prix de Rome. In his memoirs, he described his heroine as

“a queen of crimes and dissipations”. Regarding the judges’ failure to award him the prize,

Berlioz did have the grace to admit that it was “a little difficult to write soothing music for

an Egyptian queen bitten by a poisonous snake and dying a painful death in an agony of

remorse”.

Prokofiev does not give her a singing voice but, using the poem by Pushkin, she recounts

the rumor spread about Cleopatra by a 4

century Roman poet. Sextus Aurelius Victor

wrote of her, “The woman was so lustful that she often offered herself as a prostitute,

so beautiful that many bought one of her nights with death”. Prokofiev’s pellucid

equation of Sex = Death out-Romantics the Romantics. His Egyptian Nights tells of the

three men who are willing to give their lives in exchange for a night with this living goddess

of love, or lust, or both. But he also allowed Cleopatra to explain how her prostitution sets

her free.

Michelangelo used her image for his presentation drawings, a kind of calling card he gave

to prospective clients and patrons. Tiepolo covered the walls of the ballroom of Palazzo

Labia in Venice with episodes of her affair with Marc’Antonio, including the famous scene

of the dinner during which she dissolved a priceless pearl in a cup of vinegar to show both

her endless wealth and her bottomless contempt for that wealth. Artists of lesser skill could

not resist the subject of her death: the asp might have bit her on the arm, but the artists

felt it necessary that she bare her breast to show her arm.

The movies, too, have taken her up and seem unable to put her down. It started with

Theda Bara, the original vamp (think “vampire”) with her bottomless eyes and their come-

hither look, to make no mention of costumes so transparent as to shock even today.

The part of George Bernard Shaw’s Cleopatra was given to Vivien Leigh, who played her

both on stage and screen with charm and wit; no-one-is-quite-sure-whose Cleopatra was

acted on film by Elizabeth Taylor, who played her with abundant eye makeup and 65

costume changes. The cinematic apotheosis of Cleopatra was reached in the 2002 film:

Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, the plot of which we really don’t have to know.

However pleasant it might be to linger in contemplation of these celluloid marvels, we

might be better advised to return our attention to music and to Handel, who portrayed

Caesar and Cleopatra – perhaps he too seduced by the reported beauty of her voice –

not as historical personages, but as lovers for whom he wrote an extended hymn to

passionate love. The fact that Caesar was married and Cleopatra more than once a widow,

and to her brothers, simply doesn’t enter: these are two people caught up in sexual

passion, intoxicated by the sight and sound of one another. Bear in mind that in the open-

ing performance on 20 February 1724, Caesar was sung by Senesino and Cleopatra by

Cuzzoni. Just in case anyone in the audience might have thought of nodding off, Handel

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