The Italian countertenor Raffaele Pe joined La Lira di Orfeo under the direction of violinist Elisa Citterio for a Handel Halle Sunday morning concert dedicated to depictions of Giulio Cesare, “ein barocker Held”, (a Baroque hero). Pe had impressed a week previously in the title role of Alessandro Severo at Bad Lauchstädt and here he was at the crack of dawn – well 11am on a Sunday morning – throwing himself wholeheartedly into over an hour of bravura singing, celebrating the musical afterlife of the last Roman dictator.
Departing from the printed programme, La Lira di Orfeo launched into the overture of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Handel’s most popular opera, segueing into Cesare’s “Presti omai”, displaying immediately Pe’s clear open delivery, vocal flexibility, power across his range and evident enjoyment in performance. Handel was followed by an aria by Carlo Francesco Pollarolo, composer apparently of some 85 operas, known now only for a tiny handful of arias. One of his operas was also called Giulio Cesare in Egitto, from which we heard “Sdegnoso turbine”, notable for some fluid coloratura passages.
The less prolific but now somewhat better known Geminiano Giacomelli composed Cesare in Egitto for Milan in 1735, with a Neapolitan version for Carestini in 1736, from which we heard “Il cor che sdegnato”, with a brilliant vocal cadenza, accompanied by two horns. This led us naturally back to Handel and “Va tacito”, with a faultless horn obbligato from Egon Lardschneider, followed by the urgency of “Al lampo dell’armi” accompanied by virtuoso work on the cello from Marcello Scandelli. Each aria included ever more brilliant cadenzas.
We then had a change of pace and a leap forward in musical time to Piccinni’s 1770 Cesare in Egitto and the aria “Spargi omain di dolce oblio”, a slower and more serious aria. Francesco Bianchi’s later still (1788) opera La morte di Cesare shifted the focus from Egypt to Rome, and the brutal end for Caesar, with the aria “Saprò dógn’alma audace”, a much more classical sound with oboes and horns. This seemed to mark the end of the programme, but one item remained outstanding: Handel’s “Empio diro”, which was then performed with ornamentation throughout and an exciting cadenza at the end.