Giulio Cesare in Egitto

It was for the British capital and its refined, opera seria loving public that Georg Friedrich Handel reserved the quintessence of his art. The premiere of Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket in February 1724 was received triumphantly.

Although the adventures of the Roman consul and the Egyptian queen were not a novelty, the magnificent beauty of the countless arias dedicated to the castrato Senesino and the famous soprano Francesca Cuzzoni turned this work into one of the most performed operas.

However, swept away by the Romantic wave of the 19th century, it was only in 1922, in Göttingen, that it would briefly return to the stage, before making a comeback after the War with the great voices of that period. It was not until the 1970s, however, that the score would be reinstated in its entirety, with the original orchestration and tessitura.  This new production, directed by Davide Livermore, continues in this tradition of historically informed performance practice.