GLYNDEBOURNE remains serenely untroubled by the recession: it's great to have David McVicar's dazzlingly re-imagined version of Giulio Cesare back in the repertoire. Danielle de Niese's Cleopatra is as sexy as ever, while Sarah Connolly brings a pl
angent beauty to the title role.
The downside of de Niese's sweetly-sung ebullience is that her moments of despair don't convince, but otherwise Handel's dramatic alternations between comedy and tragedy are grippingly expressed in this melding of mezzo and counter-tenor voices.
Patricia Bardon, as the bereaved Cornelia, and Stephanie d'Oustrac, as her obsessively vengeful son Sesto, make a gloriously effective pairing, while Rachid Ben Abdeslam's high-camp Nireno and Christophe Dumaux's spoilt-popinjay Tolomeo light up the stage.
But while McVicar's witty substitution of the British Empire for the Roman one works perfectly, Richard Jones's sight gag-heavy transposition of Verdi's Falstaff to post-war Britain – with a cod-Hollywood denouement – misfires.
Christopher Purves does a heroic job as Falstaff but fails to communicate the character's physical generosity; Ford exudes neither danger nor paranoia, and the young lovers don't entrance as they should; Marie-Nicole Lemieux's Mistress Quickly is the only character embodying the extravagant, larger-than-life quality the show requires.
And while Giulio Cesare benefits from a flawless period-instrument performance led by Laurence Cummings, it is beyond conductor Vladimir Jurowski's powers to hoist this oddly dull Falstaff aloft.
The full article contains 238 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
