Word: caesares
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Handel's Julius Caesar...
...this musty, dusty atmosphere of doom that director Peter Sellars '80 is trying to drive away with his production of Handel's Julius Caesar. Updated, polished, and stocked chock full of yucks, in Sellar's hands this baroque warhorse becomes a close cousin of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Or two or three or four operettas. This production is four hours long. Granted, Handel wrote music as God meant music to be, but the theory that "Excess is best" holds only for sex and money...
...Nile, carries off her dramatic duties with the most distinction, particularly when you consider the tough role, the skimpy costumes, and fact that Sellars makes Larson crawl on the ground blindfolded--still singing, mind you--for the first half of Act III. Her sex-kitten seduction of Caesar--complete with all-girl band and aerial entry--would have won her a juicy part in the Gold Diggers...
...program notes, Sellars announces right off the bat that he is bringing as light a touch as possible to what is ostensibly some serious dramatic business: Caesar arrives in Egypt and is seduced by the lips and legs of Cleopatra, who wants his aid in deposing her brother Ptolemy, the king of Egypt. The typically non-historical subplot stars Cornelia and her son Sestro, who are out for revenge after Ptolemy slays paterfamilias Pompey as a gift to Caesar and an excuse to put the moves on Cornelia himself...
...noble Lincoln was heroic precisely because he defended the people against others who would tyrannize them. With the power of a Caesar, he played the role of an anti-Caesar...