Not sure which text Handel's librettist might have used as a starting-point for his Giulio Cesare, but an obvious beginning point would be Plutarch's Life of Pompey as translated by John Dryden:
[H]e passed over sea without danger. But on hearing that king Ptolemy was posted with his army at the city of Pelusium, making war against his sister [i.e., Ptolemy's sister, Cleopatra], he steered his course that way, and sent a messenger before to acquaint the king with his arrival, and to crave his protection. Ptolemy himself was quite young, and therefore Pothinus, who had the principal administration of all affairs, called a council of the chief men, those being the greatest whom he pleased to make so, and commanded them every man to deliver his opinion touching the reception of Pompey. It was, indeed, a miserable thing, that the fate of the great Pompey should be left to the determinations of Pothinus the eunuch, Theodotus of Chios, the paid rhetoric master, and Achillas the Egyptian. For these, among the chamberlains and menial domestics, that made up the rest of the council, were the chief and leading men. Pompey, who thought it dishonorable for him to owe his safety to Caesar, riding at anchor at a distance from shore, was forced to wait the sentence of this tribunal. It seems they were so far different in their opinions that some were for sending the man away, and others again for inviting and receiving him; but Theodotus, to show his cleverness and the cogency of his rhetoric, undertook to demonstrate, that neither the one nor the other was safe in that juncture of affairs. For if they entertained him, they would be sure to make Caesar their enemy, and Pompey their master; or if they dismissed him, they might render themselves hereafter obnoxious to Pompey, for that inhospitable expulsion, and to Caesar, for the escape; so that the most expedient course would be to send for him and take away his life, for by that means they would ingratiate themselves with the one, and have no reason to fear the other; adding, it is related, with a smile, that “a dead man cannot bite.” This advice being approved of, they committed the execution of it to Achillas. He, therefore, taking with him as his accomplices one Septimius, a man that had formerly held a command under Pompey, and Salvius, another centurion, with three or four attendants, made up towards Pompey’s galley. In the meantime, all the chiefest of those who accompanied Pompey in this voyage, were come into his ship to learn the event of their embassy. But when they saw the manner of their reception, that in appearance it was neither princely nor honorable, nor indeed in any way answerable to the hopes of Theophanes, or their expectation, (for there came but a few men in a fisherman’s boat to meet them,) they began to suspect the meanness of their entertainment, and gave warning to Pompey that he should row back his galley, whilst he was out of their reach, and make for the sea. By this time, the Egyptian boat drew near, and Septimius standing up first, saluted Pompey in the Latin tongue, by the title of imperator. Then Achillas, saluting him in the Greek language, desired him to come aboard his vessel, telling him, that the sea was very shallow towards the shore, and that a galley of that burden could not avoid striking upon the sands. At the same time they saw several of the king’s galleys getting their men on board, and all the shore covered with soldiers; so that even if they changed their minds, it seemed impossible for them to escape, and besides, their distrust would have given the assassins a pretence for their cruelty. Pompey, therefore, taking his leave of Cornelia, who was already lamenting his death before it came, bade two centurions, with Philip, one of his freedmen, and a slave called Scythes, go on board the boat before him. And as some of the crew with Achillas were reaching out their hands to help him, he turned about towards his wife and son, and repeated those iambics of Sophocles—
“He that once enters at a tyrant’s door, Becomes a slave, though he were free before.”
These were the last words he spoke to his friends, and so he went aboard. Observing presently that notwithstanding there was a considerable distance betwixt his galley and the shore, yet none of the company addressed any words of friendliness or welcome to him all the way, he looked earnestly upon Septimius, and said, “I am not mistaken, surely, in believing you to have been formerly my fellow-soldier.” But he only nodded with his head, making no reply at all, nor showing any other courtesy. Since, therefore, they continued silent, Pompey took a little book in his hand, in which was written out an address in Greek, which he intended to make to king Ptolemy, and began to read it. When they drew near to the shore, Cornelia, together with the rest of his friends in the galley, was very impatient to see the event, and began to take courage at last, when she saw several of the royal escort coming to meet him, apparently to give him a more honorable reception; but in the meantime, as Pompey took Philip by the hand to rise up more easily, Septimius first stabbed him from behind with his sword; and after him likewise Salvius and Achillas drew out their swords. He, therefore, taking up his gown with both hands, drew it over his face, and neither saying nor doing anything unworthy of himself, only groaning a little, endured the wounds they gave him, and so ended his life, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, the very next day after the day of his birth.
Cornelia, with her company from the galley, seeing him murdered, gave such a cry that it was heard to the shore, and weighing anchor with all speed, they hoisted sail, and fled. A strong breeze from the shore assisted their flight into the open sea, so that the Egyptians, though desirous to overtake them, desisted from the pursuit. But they cut off Pompey’s head, and threw the rest of his body overboard, leaving it naked upon the shore, to be viewed by any that had the curiosity to see so sad a spectacle. Philip stayed by and watched till they had glutted their eyes in viewing it; and then washing it with sea-water, having nothing else, he wrapped it up in a shirt of his own for a winding-sheet. Then seeking up and down about the sands, at last he found some rotten planks of a little fisher-boat, not much, but yet enough to make up a funeral pile for a naked body, and that not quite entire. As Philip was busy in gathering and putting these old planks together, an old Roman citizen, who in his youth had served in the wars under Pompey, came up to him and demanded, who he was that was preparing the funeral of Pompey the Great. And Philip making answer, that he was his freedman, “Nay, then,” said he, “you shall not have this honor alone; let even me, too, I pray you, have my share in such a pious office. that I may not altogether repent me of this pilgrimage in a strange land, but in compensation of many misfortunes, may obtain this happiness at last, even with mine own hands to touch the body of Pompey, and do the last duties to the greatest general among the Romans.” And in this manner were the obsequies of Pompey performed. The next day Lucius Lentulus, not knowing what had passed, came sailing from Cyprus along the shore of that coast, and seeing a funeral pile, and Philip standing by, exclaimed, before he was yet seen by any one, “Who is this that has found his end here?” adding, after a short pause, with a sigh, “Possibly even thou, Pompeius Magnus!” and so going ashore, he was presently apprehended and slain. This was the end of Pompey. Not long after, Caesar arrived in the country that was polluted with this foul act, and when one of the Egyptians was sent to present him with Pompey’s head, he turned away from him with abhorrence as from a murderer; and on receiving his seal, on which was engraved a lion holding a sword in his paw, he burst into tears. Achillas and Pothinus he put to death; and king Ptolemy himself, being overthrown in battle upon the banks of the Nile, fled away and was never heard of afterwards. Theodotus, the rhetorician, flying out of Egypt, escaped the hands of Caesar’s justice, but lived a vagabond in banishment; wandering up and down, despised and hated of all men, till at last Marcus Brutus, after he had killed Caesar, finding him in his province of Asia, put him to death, with every kind of ignominy. The ashes of Pompey were carried to his wife Cornelia, who deposited them at his country house near Alba.
...except in the Met version, Tolomeo gets to take the final curtain with the victors, bloodied but otherise no worse for wear. Poor Pompey's head remains in its box.
Afterthought: well, what makes you think he would use an English source? The libretto is in Italian, not so? So how about an Italian source? Or, while we are at it, the original Greek?
Mr. and Mrs. Buce ventured forth on a bright spring morning to spend 4.5 hours in the Palookaville multiplex in the audience for the Met HD presentation of Handel's Giulio Cesare--and count our time well spent. This is the famous-all-over-town Glyndbourne production, decked out as Gilbert and Sullivan. Most of the buzz has centered on Natalie Dessay and David Daniels as Caesar and Cleopatra and for sheer theatricality, they deserve the credit. They're both warm, engaging personalities with a knack for theater far above the mean among opera singers. Dessay in particular--she's got her Carol Burnette cover down cold. But for music, the day belonged to the second string--Patricia Bardon and Alice Coote as Cornelia and Sesto, two mezzos together as mother and son. Each was fine in her own right but the chemistry was astounding--the kind of companionship in which each makes the other look better. Bardon's injured dignity as the quintessential Roman matron was so much more in evidence when set off against her impetuous, hot-blooded son. And by precise corollary, you got to see better what he was by letting her show yo0u what he was not. Their first-act closer, "on nata a lagrimar"--I can't remember when I've heard two people work so well together or enrich each other so much.*
Aside from Bardon and Coote, the show-stopper was Christophe Dumaux as Tolomeo--heavy on the clowning but for Tolomeo, that is rather the point: he's a callow little twit, the Lieutenant Fuzz of assassins, one who can squeeze frivolity from the gravest of occasions.
Daniels and Dessay are charming--so much so that you might not notice that neither one was quite up to the job. Daniels has fine acting chops but he lacks the sense of menace, the capacity to inspire awe, that you would want in any Caesar. And his voice was so weak at the beginning that you had to wonder whether there was something wrong with the sound system (as the day went on, either he got better, or I got used to it).
And Dessay--said to say but she really seems to be passing her prime. I say this without a hint of schadenfreude: I love her all to pieces and I owe her gratitude for some of the happiest evenings I ever spent in the theater anywhere. But she's apparently had some voice troubles lately and it seems to show. Not that she is phoning it in or anything: you can see as much discipline and attention to detail as ever. In the intermission interview, she says she has been doing yoga an hour and a half a day and I can believe it: from the look of those biceps, she could lift up a Volvo. Right now I think her best days may be behind her and I can only hope I am wrong. --- *But wait: here's a review of an earlier production when Cornelia and Sesto were Stephanie Blythe and, yes, David Daniels. Wish I could have been there: for my money, Blythe is the best there is, and I suspect Daniels is better suited in any event for Sesto than for the star. In any event, the reviewer called it "maybe the most electric moment I have ever experienced in an opera house." Strong language: wonder if he would say so today.
You had to feel for Renee Fleming doing the intermission interviews for the Met Rigoletto yesterday, As in --paraphrased--You've sung this opera before; how did the new 1960s Las Vegas set change your understanding of the opera? --Oh, not a lot, Rigoletto is more or less timeless. --Ah. Well, how did working with this case enrich your appreciation of the part? --Well, we are old friends and have sung it together before. In short, happy, good-natured and a little bland. Although the negative information is itself probably interesting: Rigoletto probably is an opera that survives changes of period and locale better than some others--seduction, betrayal and murder being, after all, among the constants of the man condition (leave it to the Germans, of course, to do it with apes). Perhaps the two having most fun were Christine Jones and Susan Hilferty as set and costume designers--they are the ones that got to play around with the neon lights and those glistening faux-sharkskin tuxedo jackets. Aside from those two, the most interesting thing I heard was the director Michael Mayer, fresh from the more conventional theatre, as he remarked on how invigorating it was to work with a cast who actually seemed to understand their roles: just as a guess, no mainstream opera star ever turns to the director and asks "what's my motivation here?" (as Ronald Reagan is alleged to have done before a State of the Union message). But good-natured and bland, you have to admit, sound like odd adjectives to apply to so murky a tale of vengeance. Mrs. Buce (a special friend of Rigoletto) offers a telling insight--one important respect in which Verdian malediziione still trumps the Sinatran Las Vegas. That is: take Don Rickles--the most point of comparison with the Verdian hunchback. Rickles may have been a professional jerk, but you never doubted that he had his own bank account and that he might survive even if Frankie Boy cut him off. But the Duke's jester--ah, aside from his keeper, he's got nothing. I think she's right: since he is not hanging by a thread over the abyss, the Sinatran version loses an indispensable note of desperate insecurity. Footnote: I'd say the use of a n Arab guy in Arab headdress was a stretch that didn't get across. I think I see the point: Mayer wanted somebody menacing and exotic to deliver the curse. But as staged, he just wound up looking a little silly,. Besides, at the risk of indulging in chronological fussiness, this is the 1960s we are talking about: my guess would have been that the Arabs didn't show up in force until after OPEC quadrupled the barrel price of oil, i.e., 1973.
Deborah Voigt, doing the intermission interviews at the Met's HD Maria Stuarda yesterday, asked the stars if they had done any research into the history behind the great conflict between the two queens, Mary Stuart of Scotland and England's Elizabeth I. Joyce DiDonato, who sang a glorious Mary, said someone had given her a picture book. Joshua Hopkins, (Cecil), said he'd looked at Glenda Jackson's performance in the old PBS Series. One could snigger at the definition of history. But then Matthew Rose (Talbot) harrumphed that history really didn't figure: that this was a reworking of a play by Schiller and as everybody knows, the central event--the personal confrontation between Mary and Elizabeth in the forest at Fotheringay, simply did not occur. So, an Italian operatic rendition of a German dramatic presentation of what never happened to begin with. All fair comment, but there's another sense in which both DiDonato and Hopkins had it right. This is, to labor the point, a drama, and it is perfectly respectable to wonder what others had done with it. DiDonato made essentially this point: she said she had watched others, and learned from them, and then felt the freedom to make it her own. Peter Gelb, the Met's major domo, likes to promote the fact that this is a first-ever Maria Stuarda for the Met--odd, which you recognize that it is a wonderful showcase for the female lead (or maybe two), and at the same time gratifyingly cheap to produce--no need for overproduced sets, or overdone crowd scenes. And while strictly accurate, Gelb's remark may miss a larger point: the two queens have really never faded into obscurity. Beverly Sills turned in a career-defining performance of the opera next door to the Met at the NYC Opera back in 1972. And there have been at least two remarkable productions of the Schiller play in the last decade (more by lucky accident than plan, I got to see both, and they were wonderful). That plus any number of old TV and movie renditions should give the aspirant enough to work with. People speak of this as a two-character opera--Elizabeth and Mary. I'd say a bit more like one and a half. Elizabeth galumphs (sic) on stage first at the Met and the two share the big scene in the middle, but in terms of sheer number of notes sung, Mary clearly runs the table. DiDonato's Mary was everything you, or at least I, could want (I gather she took the register down a bit from the original but my ear isn't well enough attuned to notice). Elza van den Heever's Elizabeth was --interesting, and I don't mean that to be quite as snide as it sounds. Hers is a crudely masculine queen who waddles in a Pythonesque sort of a costume. Either it works or it doesn't: I thought it interesting but I can see how others might think this display of chromosomal excess comes at the expense of feminine delicacy. Either way, she seems to have thought through every line, and to mean exactly what she says. A larger issue is that her voice doesn't seem very big. This wasn't really a problem in the boxy little movie theatre; I wonder how it worked in the yawning excesses of the Met.
A final point: everyone will talk about the confrontation between the two queens, but for my money one of the most arresting scenes was the dialog between Talbot and Mary after she learns that Elizabeth has sealed her doom. It's at once understated--so much so that you can overlook it--and deeply engaged. Ross is a big guy with a capacious voicebox and he is afflicted with a blessing that can be a curse to any performing artist trying to build a career: he makes it look easy.
