Upstate, Schlather has been unfurling a series of Handel productions with the terrific period-instrument ensemble Ruckus; “Cesare,” running through May 2, comes on the heels of “Rodelinda” at Hudson Hall in 2023. It is a precious bastion of an ever rarer breed.
His directorial style in dealing with this composer’s works has gotten clearer with experience. “Alcina” and “Orlando” were always quirky, often thrilling and sometimes bewildering. But this substantially yet intelligently trimmed “Cesare” — with intermission, it’s just under three hours — is a stylishly straightforward account of a story of vengeance and lust set amid Julius Caesar’s campaign to conquer both Egypt and Cleopatra. Hudson Hall has a proscenium, but Schlather’s set pushes the action downstage in front of it with two angled walls painted iridescent black. Under Masha Tsimring’s stark, shadow-throwing lighting, those walls twinkle like a starry sky.
A fashion-show catwalk extends from this space, bisecting the audience. Used for some entrances and exits, it is a permanent reminder of the sheer theatricality of Handelian virtuosity, and a silent dancer, Davon, periodically stalks it like a showgirl, a kind of fairy spirit of performative exuberance.
But that virtuosity coexists with — indeed, is a vessel for — emotional truth. Schlather has always been gifted at eliciting intense performances, daring both vocally and physically, and he draws them out of this young cast. (Really young: This is the first opera that the mezzo-soprano Raha Mirzadegan, who as Sesto sings a floating rendition of the aria “Cara speme,” has ever been in.)
The soprano Song Hee Lee, wearing Terese Wadden’s slinky, glittering Tina Turner-style miniskirts, molds her bright tone through one of opera’s greatest progressions of arias, as Cleopatra transforms from insouciant seduction to despair to ecstatic triumph. The countertenor Randall Scotting, as Cesare, uses his agile voice to convey first authority, then vulnerability; another countertenor, Chuanyuan Liu, plays the tyrant Tolomeo as a sadistic playboy.
