If Edward Said had written Orientalism today, then David Alden’s production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare for the Grange Festival could be cited as Exhibit A for evidence of the West’s condescending attitude to the Middle East. It’s true that Putin’s overawing tactics are satirised in Caesar and Ptolemy’s (Tolomeo) conference during Caesar’s aria of suspicion ‘Va tacito’, which is staged as a game of musical chairs. As ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy presides at one end of a ridiculously long table to keep his guest at an intimidating distance, and the Romans are served poisoned refreshments. But that jest is pressed into service to demonstrate more generally the sinister autocracy and dubious cultural customs of the exotic, little-known region which Caesar, the upright representative of Roman (i.e. Western) civilisation and order, encounters and subdues.
Ptolemy is first seen languishing in eccentric luxury in a bath, and later, on a divan in a glittering golden gown. The place where Cornelia, the Roman widow of Pompey, and their son Sextus (Sesto) are confined as enemies of Egypt is not an unspecified prison that could be anywhere, but in a chamber furnished with a tank of snakes and decorated with dangerous-looking tropical vegetation and cockroaches. The punishment with which Cleopatra is threatened by Ptolemy is not a simple clean execution by sword or some such means, but she is tied up to ropes by each arm, presumably to be torn in two by horses, in an arbitrarily heinous form of torture.
If these representations were brought into play to evoke a completely abstracted, unidentified Other, then they might just pass as an ironic satire, with crude humour, on the opera’s narrative of two different realms and cultures colliding. In that sense, as the confrontation between the imperial West with other regions of the world, it registers as a crasser version of David McVicar’s famous production of the opera for Glyndebourne.
But we are left in no doubt that the Other to be demeaned here is Egypt, and the Middle East more widely. In the overall setting for this political and cultural showdown between West and East, the reverse of the sober, dignified facade for the Roman side is a blood red chamber with hieroglyphics, and Egyptian flags are deployed for more public occasions. Nireno, the servant of Cleopatra and Ptolemy, is cast as a mummy sprung into life from a sarcophagus and still swaddled with linen bands, the implication being of a country haunted by zombies. The sexual relationship between Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy, isn’t simply referenced or alluded to, but acted out graphically and luridly for our titillated but disapproving gaze, as though the Romans would never stoop to such depravity and their rulers’ unconventional sexual mores never recounted by Suetonius. When Ptolemy grasps his genitals in some awkwardness and embarrassment during that encounter, there is also surely an allusion to his being a eunuch, especially as his general, Achilla, appears at that point with a blood-stained cloth. (The beheading of Pompey has already been shown in the previous scene, so there isn’t any reason to bring on further evidence of that act of violence).
Some of the attendants at Ptolemy’s palace wear ancient Egyptian headdress or there are references to their gods. Although the military guard are cast as ninja warriors in black costumes, we can safely assume that there is a visual conflation with Isis fighters and the burqa to complete the vision for Westerners of this Middle Eastern region as a terrifying, tyrannical place, saturated with radical Islamism, and with Achilla in uniform and showily decorated with medals like Gadaffi. Given that this is otherwise an essentially modern setting and would therefore be in an Islamic regime, it’s inexplicable – and indefensible – that Achilla is brought a banquet with a roast boar’s head and a suckling pig, seemingly rubbing the nose of Muslim tradition in its own precepts.
There’s nothing to suggest that any of this is to be read as a satire upon Western ways of viewing the East such that the presentation could be excused on that basis. The Romans, as Westerners, are not inherently ridiculous figures here, nor are their intentions or actions criticised or interrogated in any way. Caesar is an upstanding, dignified colonial leader of the early 20th century, first seen in an armchair in deep contemplation with a book, as though reviewing his past achievements and perhaps intending to write about them, just as the historical Caesar recorded his own military campaigns in writing (De bello Gallico). Attended by soldiers in Roman dress to draw the link between the ancient Roman empire and the modern West, his encounter with Egypt is shown as one in which the civilised, self-controlling ruler loses his head in face of the heady enchantments which Cleopatra offers him as ‘Lidia’ (during ‘V’adoro pupille’). He only finally succumbs to her and discovers her true identity when she inadvertently reveals her identity in their amorous meeting in a boat which rather resembles a gondola, and so at least gives Caesar the excuse that his surrender to her is on reassuringly comfortable European terms, not those of Egyptian luxuriant excess.
When the Romans finally overcome the Egyptians, the latters’ ninja guard automatically, uncomplainingly swap allegiance and pull the triumphal chariot, as though European victory is a natural, inevitable conclusion, not to be questioned. Cornelia is a respectable 1950s housewife with her young son, Sesto, a dutiful Just William sort of boy. Although even then, when she is presented as the subject of both Ptolemy’s and Achilla’s sexual interest, she is passively rolled on before them and presented as precisely an unappealing old frump, as though those Egyptians’ erotic feelings can’t be focussed on anything normally considered appealing but only on something ludicrously improbable.
The one possible critique of Roman – which is to say Western – imperial overreach we could read into the production is in Sesto’s being kitted out in the shoulder pads and helmet of an American football player for the concluding triumphal parade. But that’s executed with wilful subtlety and brevity, compared with the sustained garish and tired tropes of Egyptian history and culture deployed here, that it’s easy to miss any supposed condemnation. Also I’m not sure that baseball is construed as so essential a part of the American way of life that it really registers as an attack upon the otherwise delicately, defensively constructed worldview that MAGA lunatics cultivate, compared with the many more fundamental features of Egyptian identity and heritage that seem to be fair game for grotesque caricature here. If Sesto’s appearance is an implied criticism, it’s a mere throwaway comment that may as well not have been made.
Fortunately, the production is saved by outstanding musical standards where each role is vocally well delineated. Caesar’s stable resolve is aptly characterised by Tim Mead’s purely focussed lines, using very little vibrato but without loss of expression, contrasting with Hugh Cutting’s no less beguiling countertenor voice, more floridly utilised in coloratura as the wily Tolomeo. Sarah Brady develops Cleopatra as a figure of complicated versatility – initially discreet, even shy, in her music, but flourishing with richer allure in her later, ravishing arias.
Jess Dandy is a mature, motherly sounding Cornelia, while in the third countertenor part, Sesto, Zheng Jiang sings with tender agility, both enlisting compassion for their characters’ predicament. James Atkinson’s Achilla is coldly calculating, maybe lacking some menace and there’s wobble in Tristan Hambelton’s account of Curio, but Owen Willetts’s mummified Nireno has a suitable eeriness. Christopher Curnyn and the Early Opera Company bring solid support in their judicious setting of pace and tone for the Affekt of each aria. Generally brisk threading together of the connecting recitatives maintains tension and purpose throughout.
But with such unapologetic chauvinism on stage as this, normalised and dished up as sound middle-class entertainment, a Reform government can’t be far around the corner.
Curtis Rogers
Giulio Cesare in Egitto
Composer: George Frideric Handel
Libretto: Nicola Francesco Haym
Cast and production staff:
Giulio Cesare – Tim Mead; Sarah Brady – Cleopatra; Tolomeo – Hugh Cutting; Cornelia – Jess Dandy; Sesto – Zheng Jiang; Achill – James Atkinson; Nireno – Owen Willetts; Curio – Tristan Hambleton; Movement actors – Matt Cotton, Mark Crawley, Michele Matei, Stepan Kozhaev & Dominic Rocca
Director – David Alden; Designer – Jon Morrell; Choreographer – Tim Claydon; Lighting Designer – Matthew Richardson; Conductor – Christian Curnyn; Early Opera Company
The Grange Festival; Northington, Hampshire, 7 June 2026
Top image: Hugh Cutting and James Atkinson
All photos © Richard Hubert Smith