![]() But the production met with general success, a most pleasing outcome for a world premiere. This provides a good contrast with the mostly red, warm palette of the first act, resulting in a visually appealing staging that partially makes up for its lack of dynamism. The second act, set in the dark at the rear of the Senate, benefits from evocative lighting, which makes the ghost scenes quite striking. It is not until the end of the act that things change, when during Antony's soliloquy the theatre's lights are progressively switched on as to gradually break the fourth wall and address the audience. Most of the first act is built around the succession of two such settings, which seems a static, uninspired choice. The Canadian director chose to set the opera in today's Italian Senate, intending, of course, to comment on the timelessness of political dynamics, but when it comes to facing the duality of the plot, the interaction of public and private, Carsen just resolves to a basic change of scenery to Caesar's apartment. Robert Carsen's staging was not so convincing. Maybe unexpectedly, Julius Caesar proves to be an introspective opera whose public, political surface is the premise for an intimate, private investigation on morality and guilt. The evil that men do lives after them The good is oft interred with their bones So let it be with Caesar. While carrying Caesar's name, the work seems to revolve around Brutus, whose tormented sensibility is the direct expression of a time of extreme uncertainty and political disruption. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The first act closes on Caesar's assassination and Antony's prophecy of civil mayhem, while the second shows the aftermath of the murder, with Caesar's ghost haunting the conspirators, and the rise of Octavius. The results are well-structured and compelling. Here, Burton re-adapts the original play in expected fashion, occasionally modernising the text and cutting many of the characters to reduce the plot to its essentials. By the librettist's own admission, this constitutes the second chapter of a Shakespearean trilogy the two artists have been working on, the third and last title being based on the late, lesser-known Pericles. Julius Caesar marks the continuation of a collaboration between Battistelli and Burton which began years ago with another Shakespeare-inspired opera, Richard III.
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