JULIUS CESAR • SALZBURG FESTSPIELE 2025
★★★☆☆☆
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW GIULIO CESARE IN EGITTO: BUNKER THRILLER IN SALZBURG
Short after having you taken your seat at the Haus Für Mozart at the Salzburg Opera Festival wailing alarm sirens shatter the expectant atmosphere and sharp spotlights flicker hysterically across the audience in the otherwise darkened hall.
What is happening? Quite a few audience members look towards the emergency exits. Does Putin have a grudge against the Russian director? Is this serious?
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Soon we see that Dmitri Tcherniakov has placed us in a kind of neo-realism of giant Cold War shelters constructed of reinforced concrete, grille walls and heavy steel doors, where the actors swarm in while plaster and concrete dust sprinkle from the ceiling from the vibrations of the explosions that are supposedly raging upstairs.
Even the text system has gone into breaking mode with rolling, flashing warnings not to leave the room.
Julius Caesar has defeated the enemy and is now ready to receive the Egyptians’ tribute in his bunker hideout – but not everything goes as he had expected.
As a kind of welcome gift, Caesar is presented with the corpse of his opponent, whom he had otherwise promised asylum, and now the problems are piling up.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Handel’s Giulio Cesare became one of the composer’s greatest operatic hits and is filled with razor-sharp Baroque music of the highest quality. The French conductor Emmanuelle Haïm is an expert in the genre and delivers a fast-paced soundscape of crisp Baroque timbres, perfectly suited to the opera’s nearly 40 arias plus additional material.
The plot is a web of power games and intrigues that sweeps across the stage in a whirlwind of coloraturas, performed by a somewhat anonymous cast, where almost only the countertenor Christophe Dumaux as Cesare manages to stand out positively.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Olga Kulchynska as Cleopatra is wonderful as a vulgar but also tempting slut in a pink wig and cheap fur coat, who sends the Roman commander on a courtship mission.
The bunker concept is sharp, but like many sharp, conceptual ideas, the controversial stage design proves problematic to get past.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The scenography never develops further, and frankly, it becomes rather monotonous throughout the four-hour opera, where not much else happens other than the actors rushing in and out of a plot based on real events that are almost impossible to keep track of.
Tcherniakov’s interpretation is bold and full of topical political undertones, but it fails its audience with an overly long, almost avant-garde staging that seems to close in on itself.
Three stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
