Bollywood dance numbers, kung fu fighting, simulated nudity — and rock-solid musical values — added up to a sterling “Giulio Cesare” at the Met.
In David McVicar’s starry new production, Handel’s 1724 opera blends history — Julius Caesar’s love affair with the ambitious young Cleopatra — with a fictional yarn about the queen’s creepy brother, Tolomeo, who lusts for the chaste Roman lady Cornelia.
Beverly Sills’ Cleopatra in a 1966 New York City Opera production made her a star overnight. Since then, the demanding role has been regarded as a great vehicle for a diva, with seven spectacular arias that range from playful to tragic.
At the Met Thursday night, Natalie Dessay’s queen of the Nile missed the mark vocally, her soprano flat and glassy in all but a couple of the giddier numbers. Far more convincing were her acting and dancing, as she shimmied through a range of styles, from Bollywood to Charleston to “Express Yourself”-era Madonna.
The veteran countertenor David Daniels sounded unfocused in much of Cesare’s music, laboring hard in fast-moving passages before recovering for “Aure, deh, per pieta.” In this plea to the breezes to comfort his aching heart, his trademark legato soared, firm and haunting.
A better name for this production might be “Tolomeo,” given Christophe Dumaux’s electrifying performance as that villain. His lean, tangy countertenor whizzed through coloratura as nimbly as he pranced though choreographer Andrew George’s martial arts moves. And while Patricia Bardon’s Cornelia sounded like the stereotypical wooly voiced oratorio contralto, Alice Coote struck sparks as her vengeful son, Sesto. In this trouser role, Coote’s flinty mezzo and macho posing made some Met tenors seem positively girlish.
McVicar’s witty staging emphasized the East-West culture clash of the opera by transforming “Rome” into Victorian Britain and “Egypt” into a fantastic medley of Indian and Southeast Asian exotica. A unit set of severe sandstone arches morphed instantly into Cleopatra’s boudoir with the addition of gaudy silk drapes and a claw-footed bathtub — in which the “nude” Dessay warbled an aria.
The night’s real conquering hero, though, was conductor Harry Bicket, whose vivid rhythms made the episodic score sound like highlight after highlight, with scarcely a dull passage in nearly four hours of music.
Despite a few deserters in the last act, the gala audience remained after midnight to cheer “Giulio Cesare,” a masterpiece the Met is treating with just the right mix of respect and irreverence.