The last opera of the 2012 – 2013 season ‘Live from the Met in HD’ was Handel’s great opera seria Giulio Cesare in Egitto. This production was billed as being ‘the property of Glyndebourne Opera’. Indeed, from the online trailer it had been identified as the 2005 Glyndebourne production directed by David McVicar with William Christie leading the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. I cannot do better than reprising what I wrote of that stupendous performance at the time:

Giulio Cesare in Egitto is one of Handel’s greatest operas and hence one of the all-time greats! It deals with the complex inter-relationships, personal, political and sexual, of the eight main characters. It therefore requires a cast of eight equally matched great singers. It has a double plot: it tells, on one hand, of the attempts of Cleopatra to seduce Caesar to help her in her power struggle with her brother, Tolomeo, (a comedic element) and, on the other, (a tragic element) the quest for revenge by Pompey’s widow, Cornelia and their son, Sesto, for the gruesome murder at the start of the opera. The challenge for the director is to get these two interacting elements in balance; there is little scope for extraneous intervention.

This year’s Glyndebourne production, directed by David McVicar, conducted by William Christie has to stand comparison with a near-perfect interpretation seen at the Kennedy Centre, Washington, in 2000, under the musical direction and influence of Will Crutchfield (a conductor who seems little known in Europe). That performance received a well-merited spontaneous standing ovation at the end.

At Glyndebourne the curtain rises on an authentic baroque stage set with rolling waves in the harbour in the rear. However, instead of being populated with soldiers in Roman armour, they are dressed in red tunics of a modern colonial era, carrying firearms. The only apparent reason for this change of century is that it enables Cleopatra, in her seduction scene, to be presented as a cabaret coquette; likewise the cavorting of the Egyptian court is presented in the form of a night-club dance routine. Danielle de Niese (Cleopatra) gave a stupendous performance, immensely popular with at least half the audience. However it did distort the balance of the production, preventing a proper synthesis with the tragic element beautifully depicted in the mother-son relationship of Cornelia (Patricia Bardon) and Sesto (Angelika Kirchschlager), she, proud of her son’s thirst for vengeance yet fearful of his fate. Their heart-rending duets at the end of Parts I and II were the supreme musical moments of the evening. Christopher Maltman gave an excellent performance as the duplicitous Achilla. But, to me, the great disappointment of the evening was Sarah Connolly as Caesar. Although she gave a deeply felt musical interpretation of the role, it was not suited to her voice. (It was originally written for alto castrato. Authenticity has yet to go that far!) Dramatically, she lacked the stage presence of the other principals which led to a lack of balance in some of her scenes.

William Christie conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. This ensemble has a timbre different to his own Arts Florissants. It is a much larger group than the Symphony of Harmony and Invention and with, to my ears, a far more balanced tone. For me it wins the accolade for the most authentic sound for the accompaniment of Handel Opera.

So, how has this production changed over the past eight years, during which period it has had many revivals around the world? Overall it comes over even more as musical entertainment than opera seria, failing to do full justice to the profundities of Handel’s great tragicomedy. Mezzo Sarah Connolly has been replaced by countertenor David Daniels – a great improvement – and one imagines a closer representation of the original alto castrato. The major change, however, is that now the production is designed around the Cleopatra of Natalie Dessay, replacing Danielle de Niese. The sex-kitten of the latter with sinuous Bollywood dancing is replaced by the tomboy gymnastic style of Dessay, though, to the cinema audience, revealing her to be closer to the historical age of Cleopatra when she met Caesar. Neither matched the seductiveness of Hei-Kjung Hong in Washington, who had no dance routine but used other wiles including a bodice cut so low that it must have come within a millimetre of offending decency.

At least two members of the cast played the same parts as in the original performance – Patricia Bardon as Cornelia and Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo. Bardon, who appeared to be dressed for a colonial garden party, was attended by Alice Coote as her son Sesto, also inappropriately dressed in grey tweed. Both sang well though neither solo nor together did they have the subtle intensity shown at Glyndebourne; Bardon’s rapport with Coote was nowhere near that with Kirschschlager, such a dominant feature of the earlier occasion. Dumaux has developed his role a great deal over the years, now presenting someone far more sinister than the pure pantomime villain he gave at Glyndebourne.

No more carping! This was an occasion which did almost full justice to Handel’s genius, with its endless stream of melodic invention and developing drama under the musical direction of the Met’s resident baroque conductor Harry Bicket who has trained the orchestra to period perfection. The set was a replica of the Glyndebourne baroque stage-set within the Met stage, with rolling waves at the back. (The appearance at the end of modern naval ships crossing at the back was a silliness I shall forgive.) The performance lasted over four hours, with extended da capos to the arias which some considered too long – I could go on listening to Handel forever! Apart from those already mentioned there were fine performances from Guido Loconsolo as the lustful baddie Achilla and countertenor Rachid Ben Abdeslam as Cleopatra’s factotum Nireno. But the enduring memories of this production will be the faultless vocal dexterity of Daniels as Caesar and, above all, for Natalie Dessay’s all-singing, all dancing interpretation of Cleopatra.