As part of its menu of operatic options, Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) periodically satisfies the need to present baroque opera and thus pay respects to the very roots of the medium. Italian baroque master Claudio Monteverdi is often credited as a pioneer in the new merger of music, theater and sometimes dance phenom of opera, in the early 17th century, starting with the 1607 opera L’Orfeo. Among other composers, kingpin baroque composer Handel rose to prominence by exerting his mastery of the form in England in the early- to mid-18th century, chalking up a list of some 42 operas in his day.
It is Handel time at the Lobero Theatre again this weekend, as OSB stages Caesar and Cleopatra, an opera also known as Julius Caesar in Egypt or simply Julius Caesar (Giulio Cesare), as a follow-up to its memorable production of Semele in 2022. On the slender list of prior Handel sightings/soundings in town, the Music Academy of the West chose Rodelinda as its summer opera production back in 1999, also at the Lobero.
Premiered in London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1724, Giulio Cesare has gone on to become perhaps the “greatest hit” in the orbit of Baroque opera, brought into revivalist fervor through a 1972 New York City Opera, featuring Beverly Sills. In this Caesar saga, contrasting Shakespeare’s “Ides of March” focus, the emperor is in Egypt and grappling with romance with Cleopatra, murder and power jockeying in operatic terms. Seriousness notwithstanding, comic moments slip into the dramatic mix. OSB’s marketing tag line promotes the inherent melodramatic “Empire Meets Desire” and draws an analogy to a “House of Cards in ancient Egypt.”