Haendel : Giulio Cesare. Haïm.

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2013)
Set in the basement of a museum where the statues come to life, this Giulio Cesare is a real curate’s egg. The good parts are Lawrence Zazzo’s imperious Cesare and Isabel Leonard’s ardent Sesto, both beautifully sung and always faithful to Handel’s sublime music; the bad include Natalie Dessay’s flippant, simpering Cleopatra, Varduhi Abrahamyan’s underpowered Cornelia and, alas, Laurent Pelly’s direction. He’s from the misguided school that believes arias need visual ‘enhancement’. A few effective touches are offset by such risible notions as having Cesare sing ‘Va tacito’ seated in a glass case; and while Dessay’s later, tragic Cleopatra is a more credible figure — ‘Se pieta’ is her one great …