How historically accurate are the two opera versions of Giulio Cesare

in Egitto by George Frideric Handel and Antonio Sartorio? Also, what

were the advantages of setting an opera of the story of Caesar and

Cleopatra over that of Antony and Cleopatra? Discussed with reference

to the classical sources.

Submitted by

Edward Yong

Department of Classics

Kings College London

In this essay, I propose to discuss the historical accuracy of the two versions of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, by

Georg Frideric Handel and Antonio Sartorio. How faithful were they to the classical sources, and why and how

do they differ when they do? The plot of Handels version of Giulio Cesare in Egitto is attached as an

appendix, and variations in Sartorios version of the story will be noted where appropriate.

The life of Julius Caesar was an important source for Italian opera librettists throughout the 17th and 18th

Centuries. By far the most popular involved his sojourn in Egypt and his amorous involvement with Cleopatra

between September 48 and March 47 B.C. Between 1628 and 1800, there were some 50 versions on the

stage. Our main sources for the period are Dios Roman History, Book 42; Plutarchs Lives of Caesar and

Pompey; Suetonius Julius Caesar, Chapters 35 and 52; Lucans Pharsalia, Books 9-10; Appianus Civil

Wars II, Chapters 12-13; and of course De bello Alexandrino traditionally ascribed to Caesar though the last

is particularly non-committal about his relationship with Cleopatra. The only sources that go into any detail

about the relationship are Dio and Lucan.

Dios account of Cleopatra is on the whole, neutral and almost sympathetic, not at all negative. His

description of her is as follows:

For she was a woman of surpassing beauty, and at that time, when she was in the prime of

her youth, she was most striking; she also possessed a most charming voice and a knowledge of

how to make herself agreeable to everyone. Being brilliant to look upon and to listen to, with the

power to subjugate everyone, even a love-sated man past his prime

Lucans version paints her in the blackest colours. In Book 10 of his Pharsalia, he uses the most

unflattering names for her, dedecus Aegypti, Latii feralis Erinys, Romano non casta malo. One could easily

multiply his unflattering references to her by a cursory glance at Book 10 of his Pharsalia. The image of

Cleopatra that emerges from Lucan is that of an evil scheming witch, bent on the humiliation of Rome,

seducing Caesar with the Oriental luxuries of Egypt.

Before discussing the Handel in detail, it would be a sensible thing to discuss the conventions of the

Italian Baroque Opera, which might puzzle the modern observer. The opera, defined by Dr. Johnson not

unfairly from the viewpoint of the average Englishman as an exotick and irrational entertainment, was a

foreign import sung in a foreign language. It retained the atmosphere of its origins in the princely courts of

Italy, and its audience was primarily aristocratic. It was bound by strong conventions that varied little

throughout Europe, and was centred not on the chorus but on the solo voice.

The opera libretto takes us into a world of threats and blackmail, in which emotions are unconfined but

the action is limited an artificial game played by artificial rules, but the characters of skilled librettists offer us

an impression of psychological subtlety and profundity, often in flashes and sometimes throughout the whole
opera.

It would be idle to deny that the audience of Handels day showed little or no interest in opera as

continuous drama. In Italy, it was usual for the audience to gossip, eat, drink, talk politics, play cards and

amuse themselves with their mistresses in their boxes, only stopping to listen when one of their favourite

singers came on. In England, the audiences may have been a little more orderly, but not much. They regarded

the arias of the cadet singers as occasions for discussing the merits of their betters. They certainly listened to the

stars Senesino, Cuzzoni, Faustina, and the rest and made a great deal of noise at the end of their arias,

cheering, countercheering and arguing about their relative status. Not unnaturally, they had little use for

quartets, trios and duets: how was one to judge the soprano castrato hero if the contralto heroine kept chipping

in? Most of the audience did not understand Italian and were bored by the recitatives, though the printed libretti

on sale in the theatre gave a line-by-line translation as well as the cast list and the argument of the plot. They

also expected a happy ending.

There remains another group of conventions with which someone coming to baroque opera must come to

terms, those that govern the choice and treatment of the principal voices. The most conspicuous and most

notorious is the use of the castrato. There are obvious impediments to our acceptance of a class of opera in

which the hero, be he a famous conqueror such as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, and who is always the

most ardent of lovers, is sung not by a tenor or even a baritone, but by a castrato. Often the villain of the piece

is another castrato, like Ptolemy in both Handel and Sartorios versions of Giulio Cesare.

This is easily explained. The association in the minds of Handel and his contemporaries was

predominantly between the lover-hero and the high voice. The usual instrument to denote military heroism was

the trumpet, and the tone of a high voice is much like that of a trumpet, brilliant and strident, with many

warlike associations hence the profusion of martial arias matching trumpet and high-voice. It did not matter

much to the audience if the high voice that played the hero was a castrato or a female singer in a pants role.

Next, since the principal agent of the drama was the voice, the similarity of pitch is a dramatic advantage.

The popularity of castrato and travesty roles had one side effect that may be lost on todays audiences and less

easy to appreciate; it encouraged a good deal of sexual innuendo and double entendre, not always of the politest

nature in the libretti. On the continent, this was complicated by the fact that castrati sometimes played female

roles. Voice parts did not always correspond to the natural gender of the role sung: Rodisbe, Cleopatras old

nurse in Sartorios version, is sung by a male tenor. A male tenor singing the part of an older woman is not

uncommon in Venetian opera, and is usually a semi-comic role full of irony and wry reflections on life and

ageing.

Venice was one of the opera capitals of Europe, and the quality of operas written for Venice was much

higher. Venetians were a sophisticated audience hearing their own language. As a result, the Venetians, with an
operatic tradition going back eighty years to Monteverdi and Cavalli, had certain standards with regards to

libretti; they were little interested in spectacle, in which a commercial house was at a disadvantage compared

with a court, but they liked the heroic element to be sprinkled with irony, if not with humour. This Venetian

taste can be detected in the earliest drafts of Handels Giulio Cesare, which had a brief recitative and aria for

Nirenus reflecting ironically on old age and beauty.

The plots of baroque opera are derived from classical or historical sources and their characters are generally

historical persons. The librettists seem to have prided themselves on supplying authentic detail, for they

generally point out in their Argument how much of the plot is founded on fact. Almost the first remark of

Julius Caesar in both operas is I came, I saw, I conquered. If recognising these cliched words could cause a

modern 20th Century audience to guffaw with laughter (as the author has seen on one staging of the Handel),

how much more would an aristocratic Venetian or London audience have caught these small details?

Antonio Sartorio was one of the most important opera composers in Venice in the generation after Cavalli.

His Giulio Cesare in Egitto, a setting of a libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, was premiered on 17

December 1676 at the Teatro San Salvatore and seems to have enjoyed particular success.

Bussani does not, unlike many librettists, list his classical sources in the preface to the first printed

libretto of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, he could easily have drawn upon Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Suetonius, Lucan,

and Appianus. While heroic, historical events drawn from such classical sources may serve less as a mere

pretext for amorous entanglements here than they do in many Venetian libretti, love interest still looms large in

Bussanis text. Cleopatra, who employs her feminine wiles to win Caesars support in her struggle against her

brother Ptolemy for the throne, finds herself entrapped by Caesars charms. For three acts, Cornelia, the

mourning widow of the murdered Pompey, fends off amorous advances from no less than three suitors, Curio,

Ptolemy, and Achillas. At the end of Act III, when Pompey has been suitably avenged by the capture and

imprisonment of Ptolemy, she finally accepts the hand of Curio, and the opera ends with the requisite two pairs

of lovers that commonly bring down the curtain on Venetian stages: Caesar and Cleopatra, Curio and Cornelia.

While all the events of the main plot are more or less recognisable in Dio, Plutarch and the rest, the sub-

plot centring on Cornelia and Sextus, who appear in the second scene and are rarely absent for long, find no

direct parallel in classical histories.

Along the way, various features beloved of Venetian audiences are brought into play: stage spectacle,

though without elaborate machinery (an eclipse of the sun in Act I Scene i; sea and land battles by moonlight in

Act III Scene i); a sleep scene (Cleopatra feigns sleep onstage in Act II Scene xvii to learn what is in Caesars

heart); comic interludes and asides from the old nurse, Rodisbe, and the eunuch, Nirenus. Cornelia is the

subject of various unsuccessful rape-attempts. Bussanis libretto employs travesty and disguise with a
vengeance. In Act I, Cleopatra gains entrance to Caesars quarters not tied up in a bedrug on the back of her

servant Apollodorus, as in Plutarch, but disguised as a serving girl, Lydia. From these modest beginnings, the

use of disguise spreads to include both Sextus and Cornelia. At his first appearance in Act II Scene xiv, Sextus

has dressed himself up in as a eunuch to gain entry to Ptolemys palace. When he reappears in xxii he has

changed clothes with Cornelia, whose garb he does not abandon till the end of the opera. To complicate matters

further, Cornelia, having first borrowed Sextus eunuch attire in Act II Scene xxii, then spends part of Act III in

armour disguised as her brother Scipio. None of these oft-maligned aspects of Venetian opera gets particularly

out of hand.

Act II Scene xxii is worthy of comment. Sextus enters in his mothers gown, while Cornelia herself looks

on, dressed as a eunuch. The pair has resolved to carry out a hare-brained scheme of the comic nurse Rodisbe, to

assassinate Ptolemy. Ptolemy chooses Cornelia (actually Sextus in veil and drag) to share his bed that night,

undresses and beckons Cornelia (Sextus) to join him in the bath. Sextus takes up Ptolemys sword to strike

him down as he enters his bath. But as Sextus raises the sword, in walks Achillas to foil the scheme. The scene

could have been taken seriously. One suspects however, that with Sextus always on the verge of discovery as

the amorous Ptolemy first tries to peer beneath his (her) disguise, is headed off by Rodisbe, then orders him

(her) to undress and enter the bath while the tyrant does likewise, it would have been played as a lively mixture

of suspense and comedy. Toward the end of Act III, he is still in Cornelias clothes, still trying to carry out the

comic nurses scheme. The plot also fails a second time, and Sextus is saved in the nick of time by Curio.

In Sartorios version, Caesar, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Sextus and Nirenus are Sopranos; Ptolemy is an Alto;

Curio and Rodisbe are Tenors, and Achillas a Bass. Out of Sartorios sixty-five arias and duets, Cleopatra

clearly dominates with fourteen solos and four duets of various kinds, while Caesar follows at a distant second

with eight solos and two duets.

Sartorios treatment of Cleopatra outshines all his other characters. Cleopatras first appearance in Act I

Scene vii establishes her as a kittenish seductress. Her recitative and C major aria contain the brilliant lines

Coun guardo Meglio, chegli non fece Col capo Pompeo Cesare oblighero.

The last aria in Sartorios version is Cleopatras exultant Ho un alma che brilla which brings down the

final curtain, is a full fledged competition aria pitting soprano against trumpet, with repeated high bs and a

sustained top a of several measures in both voice and instrument. Unusual, since trumpet showpiece arias were

usually for triumphant or fighting heroic male characters. Bussani was certainly painting a very full view of

Cleopatra in his libretto.

In Bussanis version, in Act I Scene i, in the middle of Caesars opening martial aria Su, trombe

guerriere (Sound, warlike trumpets), a solar eclipse occurs. This eclipse is not mentioned in any of the classical

sources and seems to be an invention of Bussani. One may well ask what the purpose of this was. We recall
that early Venetian Baroque opera was full of Gods and Ghosts, as well as supernatural phenomena. Venetian

audiences would have enjoyed and often understood subtle references to aspects of Roman culture, and it is

unthinkable that Bussani would have added irrelevant details on a whim or merely for spectacle.

Assuming that the eclipse had significance, we may turn to the ancient sources to determine the meaning

of such an occurrence. From Livys account of an eclipse in 190 B.C., we see that Romans were acquainted

with the natural cause of solar eclipses. Plutarch informs us that the sun was totally eclipsed in the hour in

which Romulus was conceived; and that a solar eclipse occurred on the same day on which Rome was founded.

It would then appear that these obscurations of the sun were in some way believed to signify the close of one

regime and the emergence of its light to signify the beginning of another. The conclusion seems obvious

Bussani meant this to signify the complete extinguishing of Pompeys star in Roman politics and the start of

Caesars one-man show, a reference not likely to have been lost on his audience. Why then, does the later Haym

not retain the eclipse? The answer is also equally obvious. Handel was writing for a London audience that did

not understand Italian, so the eclipse and Caesars reflection on the meaning of the portent would have been lost

on them.

We note some small divergences from the classical sources in Bussanis plot, followed by Haym: in the

opera, it is Ptolemy and Achillas who order the attack on Caesars forces, while in the classical sources, it is

clearly the idea of Pothinus. Next, Dio tells us that Ptolemy perished in his haste to cross the river: Bussani

has Ptolemy taken away in chains at the end of the opera; while Haym has Ptolemy killed by a vengeful Sextus

in full sight of Cornelia who does a little dance in joy.

The years between the last revival of Bussanis libretto in 1689 and Hayms rewriting in the 1720s had

witnessed the substantial reform of Italian opera, from which emerged the tamer tradition known as opera seria.

Although more moderate in this respect than some, Bussanis had stood in the old Venetian tradition of the

intrigue drama in which a certain amount of authentic historical window-dressing provided a backdrop for a

dizzying whirl of amorous reshufflings. Hayms reworking re-formed the drama to the mould of 18th Century

serious opera.

The first performance of Handels Giulio Cesare was at the Kings Theatre on 20 Feb 1724. The libretto

was by Francesco Nicola Haym. Much of the Haym version not only arias and recitatives, were completely

lifted from Bussanis original, but virtually all the dramatic highlights except Caesars soliloquy on the beach

of Handels version can be traced to the 17th Century. In the argument to the printed libretto, Haym dutifully

listed his classical sources The Comment. of Caesar, lib. 3 & 4. Dion. lib. XLII. Plut. in the Life of

Pompey and Caesar and pointed out a few areas in which he had taken poetic licence for the sake of the

drama. No mention is made of the contemporary sources to which he owed a far more direct debt than to the
classical authors.

Handels version of Giulio Cesare in Egitto belongs to the specific genre of opera seria known as heroic.

What distinguishes them is not so much the rank of the characters (nearly everyone in opera seria belongs to a

royal or noble family), but the solemn and grandiose spirit in which this is treated by their authors. Love and

statecraft are the themes of heroic opera; exercised by means of copious intrigue. The characters are torn by

conflict between amorous and political motives, and they have a great deal to say about outraged honour.

As the years went by, the English audience was increasingly bored by recitative in a language whose finer

points it could not grasp. The long and thoughtful recitatives in the Bussani were savagely cut to the bare

minimum required for understanding of the plot.

The Bussani libretto needed shortening in another respect; Handels arias were on a bigger musical scale

than those of Sartorios, which were often flexible ariosos and not full da capo arias in the later baroque form.

Something had to be done if the opera was not to last all night. Bussanis Giulio Cesare libretto contains sixty-

five arias and duets; Hayms adaptation has thirty-three. There was a significant redistribution of emphasis as

well as a contradiction: while the thirteen arias between Curio, Nirenus and Rodisbe are entirely swept away,

Caesar and Sextus have more arias in Handels opera than in Sartorios. Haym developed the characters of

Pompey's widow and son, Cornelia and Sextus, and played down the typical Venetian cast of extras, cutting

out the comic nurse Rodisbe and reducing Curio and Nirenus to merely loyal feeds (Nirenus single aria

disappeared entirely in later revivals). Haym radically pruned the situations and Handel concentrated the interest

on the chief characters and their moving monologues. To an already complex plot, centred on Cleopatra's love

for Caesar and her acquisition of the throne from her preposterous brother Ptolemy, he added a poignant and

dramatically arresting scene before Pompey's tomb and introduced the historical incident of Caesar's swim

across Alexandria harbour.

Hayms version retains only Cleopatras amorous deception involving Lydia. The rampant disguises of

Sextus and Cornelia are purged entirely, with a more decorous result. Hayms reworking not only simplifies the

love aspect of the drama and expunges virtually all traces of comedy but also smooths out some complexities of

Bussanis original characterisation, as we will see in the person of Caesar later.

Handels roles are as follows: Cleopatra and Sextus are Sopranos; the famed Alto castrato Senesino played

Caesar; Cornelia, Ptolemy and Nirenus were likewise Altos; Achillas and Curio both Basses. Handels

characters, with the possible exception of Nirenus and Achillas, are all young, some of them very young indeed.

Caesar, who was 54 when he met Cleopatra, is not the middle-aged man of Shaws play, nor is he true to

history. He is a brave soldier, but a still more ardent lover, as his music makes abundantly clear and the castrato

voice (especially that of Senesino) implies. Sextus is a mere boy; Cleopatra was 20 in history and is certainly

no more in the opera; Ptolemy is even younger. The Argument describes him as the young ambitious and
licentious King... naturally cruel and devoid of Honour. Cornelia is herself sufficiently attractive to provoke

violent and instantaneous man in every man she meets except Caesar.

The opera affords plenty of opportunity for spectacle: a crowd of Caesar's followers as he crosses the Nile

(not in the Bussani), Ptolemy surrounded by his harem, and the apotheosis of Cleopatra amid the nine muses in

a vision of Mount Parnassus (not in the Bussani-Sartorio either), the stage can be crowded in the best MGM

fashion. Yet, the great public moments are there precisely in order to provide a contrast with the central

intimacy of the private drama which a handful of characters is playing out in the foreground.

Handel's operas are not about spectacle, canary fancying or visual gimmickry, although they feature

elements of each. They are primarily concerned with the credible emotions of real people. The merit of Giulio

Cesare lies in the subtlety with which the composer is able to vary his presentation of these emotions and

shape vital, intensely human figures from the posturing creations dreamed up in a Baroque fantasy version of

Roman history, a mixture of Plutarch, Dio Cassius, Lucan, Venetian romance and the singing of his company.

The more important the character, the more arias he or she got, allowing them to unfold the various aspects of

their personalities.

Cleopatra is a prime example of this mastery. Though English audiences knew her best as the dignified

heroine of Dryden's popular All For Love, Handel and Haym are closer to Shakespeare in their portrait of an

ambitious and undaunted woman guided by the truth of her feelings and devoted to love. Cleopatras eight

arias, two magnificent accompanied recitatives and a duet with Caesar show her in an infinite variety of moods.

She is worked lightly into the drama, after most of the other principals have already appeared, with a flippant E

major aria full of teasing trills and mordents, cleverly suggesting bantering irony as she tells her effete brother,

"Non disperar; chi sa? Se al regno non lavrai, avrai sorte in amor". After she has met and bewitched Caesar,

her next aria Tutto puo donna expresses her creed of frivolous sensuality -'a pretty woman can do anything",

she cries. Tu la mia stella sei, an invocation to hope, exuberant but tinged with languorous expectation, is

the perfect vehicle for the mixture of confidence and mischief with which she looks forward to her triumph; she

addresses hope but is in no doubt over the outcome.

It is in Act II that Handel achieves his masterstroke. Before she is certain that she has bewitched Caesar,

the flirt is caught in her own toils. Cleopatra is no longer acting on policy; the emotional intensity of the music

leaves no doubt that she is in love. Cleopatra's seduction of Caesar is not, after all, quite complete. She

presents him with a carefully stage-managed erotic vision of herself as Virtue 'assisted by the nine Muses' on

Mt Parnassus. Handel's orchestration of this, to a leisurely sarabande melody, is incomparably seductive:

onstage the band (nine instruments representing the Muses) comprises oboe, bassoons, strings (including a

viola da gamba thrumming full chords), harp playing arpeggios and theorbo (reminiscent of the lush continuo

textures of Monteverdi); in the pit the basic orchestra supplies the gentlest of comments, as Cleopatra takes up
the theme, with the full sensuous accompaniment. Before she starts singing, only the stage band plays; Caesar

hears the concert behind closed back-flats and takes it for the music of the spheres. When the flats are withdrawn

to reveal Virtue and her Muses, Caesar exclaims in wonder at what he sees and hears.

In the theatre of course Handel and his stage machinist set out to captivate the eyes as well as the ears of

the audience with as much craft and music as Cleopatra bestows on Caesar. As Caesar rushes to embrace her,

the scene shuts and she disappears. Winton Dean describes this scene as a mixture of harlotry and politics. An

essential point to notice here is that Cleopatra and Caesar are really in love, a marked contrast to Lucans

comments on the scene:

Nequiquam duras temptasset Caesaris aures:
Vultus adest precibus faciesque incesta perorat.

Exigit infandum corruptio iudice noctem.

Aware she as won the first round, Cleopatra solicits Venus aid for the second. Her kittenish aria Venere

bella anticipates another self-indulgent mortals dealings with the gods. But Caesar, distanced by her coyness,

is now the target of conspiracy and violence, and she is plunged into despair. The accompanied recitative and

aria Che sento?-Se pieta reveal unsuspected depths of suffering. The recitative opens dramatically after the

clamour of the conspirators and modulates with superb strength as Cleopatra registers fear, martial ardour, love

for Caesar and anxiety over his fate. The aria strikes a mood of profound tragedy, a prayer from the anguish of

her soul.

At the nadir of her fortunes, her troops defeated, herself captured and thrown into chains by her gloating

brother, her lover reported drowned, Cleopatra laments in still more moving terms. Her E major lament

Piangero la sorte mia has a melody and accompaniment of the utmost simplicity, while flutes doubling the

first violin but not the second, adds a remote wistfulness typical of Handels sensitivity to the emotional

quality of music. In the B section of the aria, Cleopatra promises to haunt Ptolemy from beyond the grave.

Cleopatras troubles are not yet over. After Ptolemy orders her maidens to leave her, she sings an

accompanied recitative, interrupted by a clash of arms which she takes as the signal for her own death.

Fortunately for her, it is Caesar coming to her rescue, and she sings a simile aria about her ship finally coming

safe into port after the storm- Da tempeste. It has the buoyant gaiety expected from Cleopatras basically

optimistic nature after the storms have passed.

. Handels Cleopatra is the equal of Shakespeares and one of the most subtly drawn characters in opera.

Winton Dean, an authority on Handels operas, states that Handels Cleopatra is one of the great characters of

opera, an immortal sex-kitten whose emotions, if ephemeral, are obsessive while they last. Every one of her

eight arias contributes to the portrait. The proof that Handel the man was far from being 'sexless and safe' is

here in her music, with its acute psychological penetration and glowing sensuality.
 Caesars music is less consistently individual, but contains some striking moments. Caesars lament in

Act I over the ashes of Pompeys head, Alma del gran Pompeo deserves the universal praise bestowed upon

it. The brooding modulations are unexpected, evoking the cold shadow of departed glory, and give the episode

an extraordinary sombre power. So might Shakespeare, had he been a musician, soliloquised on the fragile

thread from which the most heroic life depends. One wonders if Bussanis inspiration for the original soliloquy

was Lucans account of Caesars reflection at the tomb of Alexander the Great in Book 10 of Pharsalia.

Dallondoso periglio, based on the historical incident of Caesars swim across Alexandria Harbour is

more than an accompanied recitative; it is a dramatic scene of the most original design. After describing his

escape and helplessness without his legions, he addresses the breezes; the sight of the slain bodies recalls Caesar

back to reality a masterly synthesis of dramatic action and musical form.

Four of Caesars arias show him a man of action. His D major arioso Presti omai is a soldierly reply to

the welcome of the Egyptians, claiming the honours of victory. The gift of Pompeys severed head provokes

him to denounce Ptolemys barbarity in Empio, diro, tu sei, a powerful C minor aria full of angry scales and

bursts of prolonged coloratura, low in pitch and intensely energetic. We meet them again in Al lampo

dellarmi and Quel torrente.

Caesars two love songs are more immediately attractive. Non e si vago e bello, his first reaction to the

sight of Cleopatra is relaxed and light, praising her beauty, the delicious little tune consistent with the pleasure

of first sensations. In Se in fiorito ameno prato after the Parnassus scene, enchanted by Cleopatras voice, he

compares her to a bird that gives all the greater pleasure for singing unseen. The intensity of the music here

leaves no doubt that Caesar has fallen madly in love.

Hayms heroes and villains are painted in black and white, with few shades of grey. Bussanis characters

retain a certain humanity human frailty, perhaps. Bussanis Caesar and Cleopatra were heroic, certainly, but

may from time to time show signs of human weakness. By 1724, the heroes of opera seria had been permitted

few such luxuries. Haym has scrubbed his heroes clean of any smudges that might sully their godlike mien,

their consistent, single-minded unswerving adherence to the highest standards of 18th Century conduct.

No scene shows more clearly the contrast between the 17th Century hero and the 18th Century than the

first appearance of Caesar in Act II, snatched from the watery jaws of death. This gran scena for Caesar alone

on the beach is one of the greatest musical moments in Handels opera, without precedent in earlier versions. In

a mixture of accompanied recitative and aria, the hero ponders fate, beginning:
Dall ondoso periglio
Salvo mi portao al lido

Il mio propizio fato.

 The opening line goes back to Bussani and Sartorio, but in 1677, it had come from the mouth of the

faithful Curio. Caesar did not stride manfully ashore, carried by Fate; he was hauled from the ocean exhausted,

in the arms of Curio who exclaimed, surely with a hint of irony:

A londosi periglio
Tolto, O Signior, su larenoso piano

Io ti depongo Imperator Romano.

Bussani seems consciously to knock at Caesars heroism at this point, for the classical sources for the

roughtly equivalent episode paint Caesar in heroic terms. Plutarch describes him swimming to safety using

only one arm and with his head underwater in order to hold aloft and preserve valuable manuscripts in his other

hand. Bussanis hero was permitted not only physical weakness but even a moment of spiritual weakness in the

following scene. The same ironic thread was picked up when Cornelia asks:
E come
Vivi, O Cesare, e illeso

Ti sottrasti a la Parca?

Caesar replies with a particularly purple passage:

Tra londose falangi
Io per aprirmi il varco
Feci notando al lido

Del piede un dardo, e delle braccia un arco.

The irony of Caesars embroidered version would not have been lost on the Venetian audience of 1677;

one imagines the actor playing Curio would not have let the moment pass unnoticed. Just to be on the safe

side, Bussani made Caesars opening line Tra londose falangi, recall Curios more accurate description, A

londoso periglio of the previous scene, and Sartorio set the text in Caesars grandest manner, rising to a rare

high G before the cadence.

In 18th Century London, neither physical weakness nor braggadocio was acceptable. Caesar not only saves

himself, swimming Alexandria harbour with enough strength in reserve to sing his splendid soliloquy, but later

describes the feat to Cornelia in modest and accurate terms: Io fra londe nuotando al lido giunsi.

What are the dramatic advantages of setting an opera of Caesar and Cleopatra over one of Antony and

Cleopatra? While both would offer heroic battle episodes and plenty of amorous interest, the most obvious

advantage would be that an opera of Caesar and Cleopatra affords the possibility of a happy ending. One of the

conventions of Baroque opera demands a happy ending all must end happily. Plots often have the most

ludicrous twists at the end to achieve this, making the story dramatically absurd. While the episodes of Antony

dying by his own sword and Cleopatras famed death by snakebite would have provided much potential for

emotionally charged scenes, it would have been impossible to tweak the plot to provide a happy ending. In the
case of Bussanis 17th Century Venice, a tragic theme for his opera would have made the little comic frivolities

seem out of place.

In the versions of 1677 by Bussani-Sartorio and 1724 by Haym-Handel, we find two drama, then that may

serve as paradigms for their respective traditions: one with a lively mixture of comic and serious characters, the

later purged of such excesses; one with greatly enhanced complexity and added comic effect through rampant

travesty, the other tidied up, simplified, more decorous; but both with their clear debt to the classical sources.

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Primary sources
Sartorio, Antonio. Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1677). The only complete score to survive is in Naples, from which the
original Venetian version must be reconstructed on the basis of the libretto. A-R Editions Inc publish a
modern scholarly edition by Craig Monson reconstructing the 1677 Venetian premiere (with additional
material from the 1680 Naples revival), Madison (1991).
Handel, Georg Frideric Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724). Unfortunately, there does not exist a decent modern
edition of the full score. The only full score is Chrysanders edition of 1875, riddled with mistakes.
Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
Caesar, De bello Alexandrino.
Plutarch, Pompey.
Plutarch, Caesar.
Dio, Roman History.

Lucan, Pharsalia.

Bibliography
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Knapp, M. Handels Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Starck, pp
389-404. ed. Harold Powers. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1968)
Krauss, F. B. An Interpretation of the Omens, Portents and Prodigies recorded by Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius
(Philadelphia, 1930)
Lewis, A. and Forster, N. eds. Opera & Church Music 1630-1750. New Oxford History of Music Vol. 5.
(London, Oxford University Press 1975)
Monson, C. Giulio Cesare in Egitto: From Sartorio 1677 to Handel 1724 in Music & Letters, Vol. 66
(1985): pp 313-43.
Nicoll, A. A History of Early Eighteenth-Century Drama 1700-1750 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
1929)
Parker-Hale, M. A. G. F. Handel: A Guide to Research (New York and London, Garland Publishing Inc,
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Strohm, R. Essays on Handel and Italian opera (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985)