Giulio Cesare in Egitto is Handel’s most famous opera and maybe the most famous baroque opera in the repertoire, definitely the most often staged around the world. It is no surprise that it was in instant success when it was premiered in London in 1724, for it featured a truly glamorous cast – Senesino as Julius Caesar, Francesca Cuzzoni as Cleopatra, Anastasia Robinson as Cornelia, Margherita Durastanti as Sextus, Giuseppe Maria Boschi as Achilla… and Gaetano Berenstadt as Ptolemy. Berenstadt was hardly a singer whose voice could stand the comparison with some of the greatest castrati those days, such as Senesino. First, his range was notoriously short, while his physique was notoriously large. He was gigantic, tall and bulky – and therefore rarely cast as a primo uomo. Handel wrote him two more parts – the title role in Flavio and Adelberto in Ottone – and he did appear in other operas by the Caro Sassone, such as Rinaldo (in the part of Argante transposed up) and Floridante (as Timante). As it was, Berenstadt was considered well suited for bad-guy roles, although in real life he was basically a nerdy kind of guy, mostly obsessed with his book collection.
Maybe because of Berenstadt’s short range and lower range, we usually see countertenors in the parts written for his voice, especially Ptolemy. As a matter of fact, the role of Ptolemy has become chasse gardée for countertenors – the discography shows us Dominique Visse for Malgoire, Derek Lee Ragin for Jacobs, Cristopher Robson for Bolton and Mortensen, Bejun Mehta for Minkowski, Filippo Mineccia for Curtis, Christophe Dumaux for Christie, Antonini and Haïm. I’ve personally have always seen a countertenor sing the part of Ptolemy and, considering that we often have female singers in the castrato part of Julius Cesar (such as Jennifer Larmore, Anke Vondung or Marie-Nicole Lemieux), one could wonder if Handel himself would have approved of a female singer as Ptolemy. Actually, in the 1730 and 1732 revivals of the opera, Handel gave the part to contralto Francesca Bertolli. From what I understand, Bertolli didn’t possess an exceptional voice and was more famous for having the right physique for trouser roles. The issue of having a man or a woman in the role of Ptolemy actually has little to do with gender. During the baroque, audiences were used to hear a man in a woman’s role or a woman in a man role – and the existence of castrati made that possible. I would guess composers would rather use a castrato as a primo uomo, because the sound was supposed to be bright and piercing as much as a trumpet (and that is why the pairing was not usual, such as in the legendary competition in Naples between Farinelli and a trumpeter) and that was considered an advantage for heroic affetti. However, I guess I’d say “fortunately”, there were not many castrati and theatres would fight for them, making them an expensive item in a production. A contralto like Bertolli – who looked convincing in a man’s costume – was a commodity for any impresario willing to save some money. As you can hear, the issue “countertenor or contralto” is by definition a non-issue; 18th century theatres would practically never cast countertenors. And one must never forget – castrati (alto or soprano) used their natural voices, while countertenors use a combination of falsetto and mixed voice to sing in the alto (or, when that happens, soprano) range.
The defunct International Opera Collector magazine published ages ago a text “In the absence of Senesino”, in which Michael Church wonders if the part of Julius Caesar should be given to a male or a female singer. He asks conductors such as Richard Bonynge, Charles Mackerras and singers such as James Bowman and Andreas Scholl about the aria Va tacito e nascosto. Differently from castrati, both women and countertenors have a problem of register break into their low extension. Although both can disguise the register break by manipulating resonance, the effect is noticeably different in these two voices. With female singers, we hear the shift between a “fluffy” middle register and dense, upfront “chest” notes, whereas with countertenors, one hears a very bright falsetto connected, depending on the singer’s technique or stylistic choice, to a noticeably weaker mixed voice or the the sound of his natural “male voice”. Scholl, in the above mentioned article, famously answered “break? what break?”, claiming that his falsetto covered the role range of the aria. Anyway, the main problem here are not the low notes (even if a male singer will have plenty of room to go low in his natural range, grotesque as this might sound). The main difference lies in what comes above the break – we’ll hear a bright, focused sound with countertenors, with very little room for upper extensions, whereas a contralto (or mezzo soprano) will at first sound “fluffy” and only acquire a brighter edge when she goes a bit higher (and they normally go considerably higher than a countertenor and definitely with less effort and more dynamic variety). But here we’re speaking of a part written for Gaetano Berenstadt, whose tessitura is basically central, i.e., it’s all about the sound you’re going to hear over and above the passaggio. In other words, a role like Ptolemy lies right on a countertenor’s money notes. I tend to prefer a female voice in baroque trouser roles, because of the tonal richness and the usual gain in volume, but a part like Ptolemy requires an exceptional control of the passaggio from a contralto. I guess that this is why they would rather stay away. The official discography has very few female Ptolemies – I’ll skip Marcello Panni’s recording and speak of two excellent singers who do a terrific job in the aria we’re hearing this week, Sì, spietata, il tuo rigore. First, there is Monica Sinclair, in Bonynge’s excerpts with… guess who?… Joan Sutherland. Although she has a hint of the English oratorio contralto, she navigates through the passaggio with mastery and admirable focus – one hardly hears the “fluffiness” – and the low notes are solid and consistent in color with the rest of her voice. However, she goes a bit wild with her ornamentation in the repeat (and not surprisingly almost all variations take her upwards rather than downwards). For contemporary ears, it sounds odd in terms of style and it’s just a curiosity, but Ms. Sinclair’s technique deserves praise. And now we go to the singer I would call the best Ptolemy in the discography.
Although Romina Basso is usually labelled a “mezzo soprano”, I’ve heard her more often in contralto than in mezzo roles. She is a specialist in baroque music and my impression is that she prefers concert than staged performances. She has a curious stage attitude, some grimacing and one hand permanently raised to face level, an idiosyncrasy I’ve heard described as “the legato hand” (you just need to see any video of Natalie Dessay recording on studio to see a flourished version of it). Sometimes uninformed people criticise her pronunciation of the Italian language because of what is called “la erre moscia” (i.e., the letter r pronounced in a way similar to the way the French do). Actually, Ms. Basso is from Gorizia, in the region of Friuli-Venezia, right on the frontier with Slovenia. Id est, she is Italian. Some Italian regional accents involve the funny r, but I guess that the problem with “la erre moscia” is that it is traditionally used in theatre in character roles. I have no problem with Romina Basso’s “erre moscia” – I find that they add zest to many of her roles, and especially to Ptolemy, even if I must say that the way Ptolemy usually is portrayed as a blend of Liberace and Dr. Evil bothers me a little. As a matter of fact, there is only one line in the play to justify that. When Ptolemy says that Cleopatra should hold the needle and the spindle rather than the sceptre, she answers Anzi tu pur, effeminato amante, va’ dell’età sui primi albori, di regno invece a coltivar gli amori! (“I’d rather say that you, effeminate lover, still in the dawn of your life, should look for love instead of reigning”). Back to Romina Basso. I only saw Ms. Basso once, in a different role in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the virtuous Cornelia (a contralto role) and she sounded just as in her recordings, firm and dark-toned, a tad too flashing for that part. In George Petrou’s recording with the Greek period-instrument ensemble Orchestra of Patras, both main castrato roles are cast with mezzo-sopranos, Kristina Hammarström as Caesar, softer in texture than Basso.
Sì, spietata appears in the fourth scene in act 2. We’re at Ptolemy’s seraglio, where Cornelia is held captive. She has been harassed by both Achilla, a general of Ptolemy’s army (who has also killed Cornelia’s husband, Pompey), and Ptolemy himself. She refuses the king’s advance by saying that, as a Roman matron, she would never put herself in the humiliating position of concubine of a foreign ruler. At first, Ptolemy says nothing, but when he is alone, he faces the audience and sings: Sì, spietata, il tuo rigore/ sveglia l’odio in questo sen / Giacche sprezzi questo core/prova, infida, il mio velen! (“Yes, cruel woman, your severity arouses hatred in my heart/If you despise my affection, you’ll have a taste of my venom”). The text is very short and rightly so – Ptolemy doesn’t need many words to say what he has to say – he has been rejected and wants revenge. That’s a story we read in the newspaper more often than we would like. Handel didn’t feel he had to musically describe Ptolemy from many different angles (as he did in the case of Cleopatra and Caesar) – he basically throws tantrums in almost every scene. Ptolemy’s arias, with one exception, are all of them agitated in terms of rhythm and fast in tempo, although the vocal part tends to be musically rather square with many repetitions of key words such as sveglia, indegno! or ti vedrò, the coloratura restricted in range. These arias are clearly meant to give the singer room to act. My favourite of them obviously is Sì, spietata. First, this is the probably one of the most sparkling pieces of music written in the tonality of C major. It is rhythmically angular in its contrasted themes: the first one in crotchets broken by a dotted rhythm that feels like grinding one’s teeth, the text providing lots of “t” consonants to add a percussive touch to the vocal line; the second flowing in triplets when Ptolemy gives vent to his anger (the text actually is the word odio/”hatred”). There is a short figure of two notes in a descending interval on the word sveglia (arouses) that marks as a divider between the parts in the first section. The way Handel develops this material is fascinating – he actually merges them in a way that crotches and triplets alternate, as if Ptolemy were piling up all kinds of bad feelings at this point. One hears the hatred swelling up. The B section is, of course, in A minor, and has no contrast in mood with section A. We must remember that the idea here is not soften, contrast or shade anything, but only boost the affetto. Handel just develops further, in the new tonality, the crotchet-theme and the triplets-theme. The coloratura on the Italian vowel e (as in “hair”) tends to be awkward for singers and I would say Handel did it on purpose – Ptolemy is not supposed to seem dangerous – we see that neither Cleopatra nor Cornelia are at first afraid of him – although he definitely is. Cornelia will have to defend herself against rape with a dagger and be saved at the last minute by her son, Sextus.
Sì, spietata is an aria that needs the right tempo to come to life, and I’m afraid this means “fast”. The texture is simple and, at a slower pace, the rhythms are not crispy enough and the effect is lost. George Petrou doesn’t wait to shift into fifth gear. This is probably the fastest version of this aria in recordings and the bold choice pays off. The atmosphere is frantic, the orchestra is stingy in sound and the articulation is immaculate. In the A section, the violins practically double the vocal part and it is important that they sound as waspish as the singer. This is an aria is about a serious burst of ill temper, it has to be over the top. Romina Bass has the edge on the competition from moment one – the tone is firm, intonation is clear, divisions are precise, the diction is crystalline. She negotiates the passaggio as if it didn’t even exist and one does not hear any “fluffiness” throughout her range. Most importantly, she completely avoids inconsistency of registers, and her method is foolproof: she never puts too much weight on low notes (as many a contralto like to do to show off the power of their bottom register) – Basso just goes up and down through the passaggio in perfectly balanced tonal quality, producing the right level of excitement rather by accent. You can hear that as she delivers the “divider” figure sveglia – while these fall right in the sweet spot of a countertenor’s voice, that is not the case with a female singer. Basso marks it rather by adopting an almost “spoken” tonal quality, you can hear the irritation in her voice. Since Petrou is going for broke in section A, he cleverly founds the right fake cadenza at 1’12” to find a breath repose just before the coloratura. Basso handles the coloratura with the unfriendly vowel superbly and alters the last bar before the repeat to end on a high e on the word velen (venom), which she first attacks with no vibrato and gradually distorts (including in terms of pitch). It is the aural image of a psychopath grin. And now we’re ready for the repetition of A section – and we know that this is going to be overornamented, that’s what this text and this music requires.
Romina Basso has impressively precise coloratura and, in this comfortable tessitura, she can go really fast. So, what we’re hearing here is some sort of fioritura freak-out. As all female singers in this music, she’ll favor upwards variations to sparkle a little bit. As Ptolemy is not the kind of guy who would sing one cadenza when he can sing two, that’s what Romina Basso does in the end. First we have the “regular” cadenza right when Handel put a fermata sign just in case some missed it. It is very predictable in its going-up-and down scheme. And when you think she is going to deliver the concluding phrase, there comes another cadenza, a very odd one ending in a note too low for comfort on the word odio (hatred). Of course, this was done in purpose to portray Ptolemy’s exaggerated anger, as if he had burned up al his energy in this fit of temper and utter this final, hoarse “God, I hate her!” before he can exit to simmer down on a massage table.