Giulio Cesare in Full Score Review

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(More customer reviews)Giulio Cesare in Egitto is one of several Opera Serias Handel wrote in Italian on a Roman Historical subject. As you can probably guess, it deals with Julius Caesar's affair with the femme fatale of all femme fatales, theEgyptian Queen Cleopatra. For those few who don't know, Caesar's affairpredates her more famous liaison with Marc Antony. It's a fascinatingsubject, and no less a writer than Bernard Shaw wrote a play about it. Inthe Opera, Handel executes an interesting bit of gender bending thatprobably delighted Shaw. Caesar is a contralto, Ptolemy, Cleopatra'shusband and King of Egypt, an Alto. Pompey the Great's wife is also analto, as is the royal Egyptian advisor, Nireno. Cleopatra, of course, is asoprano, as is Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great. In short,there are six male characters, and only two female characters, but they aresung by six women and only two men. Now, this is the subject for a book ora doctoral dissertation, hardly to be sucessfully addressed in a 1000 wordamazon.com review, but it brings to mind a professor of Shakespeare studiesI had in college. Despite well established Elizabethan casting practices,this professor used certain speeches of Rosalind's from As You Like It tosuggest that Shakespeare was, in fact, gay. Now, given this Opera's quitenormal rococo casting practice, I wonder what my professor would've saidabout Handel? At any rate, Dover'scomplete score of Giulio Cesare is anextraordinary bargain. It is a reprint of the 1875 DeutscheHandelgeselleschaft edition, edited by renowned Handel scholar, FriedrichChrysander. The score is basically for string orchestra, with winds usedfor extra color. There are alternates to several numbers, and they areconveniently placed behind the numbers they would replace. The book iseasily read, and large enough to accommodate all orchestration. In spite ofthe occassional tendency to place wind lines below string lines, it'sperfect for podium use. It's crafted beautifully, as usual for Dover, andat Dover prices, it's not a bargain really; it's a steal.

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Product Description:
Great Baroque masterpiece reproduced directly from authoritative Deutsche Handelgesellschaft edition. Gorgeous melodies, inspired orchestration. Complete and unabridged.

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