Yesterday afternoon Paul and I went to see Handel's Giulio Cesare (his retelling of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar’s tempestuous love affair) performed at Glyndebourne just outside glitzy Lewes in East Sussex.
Glyndebourne is a posh English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Opera Festival. Initially, operas were presented within the house but there is now a freestanding opera house in its grounds. The house itself is thought to be about six hundred years old and listed at grade II.
We had a boozy picnic in the grounds before the show started.
The show itself was great. Sung in Italian with supertitles accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The production was lush - it was a sort of Bollywood meets Baroque. All-singing, all-dancing.
Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Giulio Cesare was amazing. His vocal dexterity was incredible. Soprano Louise Alder's Cleopatra equally so.
But the spoils of the night must go to, and be shared between, Cameron Shahbazi as Tolomeo and Ray Chenez as Nireno. They were beautifully sung, laugh-out-loud funny, and both camp as a row of Egyptian tents. Great fun.
These were the timing of the night:-
Gardens open: 2.00pm
Opera starts Act I: 4.00pm
Interval (20 mins): 5.25pm
Opera resumes Act II: 5.45pm
Interval (90 mins): 6.50pm
Opera resumes Act III: 8.20pm
Opera ends: 9.30pm
The final third act actually finished slightly so with the applause still ringing in our ears we legged it for the exit so I could make the 10:25 Lewes train back to London.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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