HANDEL Giulio Cesare (Bicket)
HANDEL: GIULIO CESARE THE ENGLISH CONCERT / HARRY BICKET CKD792 Considering that it is one of his best-known operas today, there are fewer albums of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt, HWV 17) than one might expect and as such, a newcomer - especially one of this quality and completeness - is most welcome. Handel composed Giulio Cesare for the Royal Academy of Music's fifth season, and it forms part of an extraordinary trilogy written between 1723 and 1725. In fact, of this trio, each opera has different qualities: Rodelinda (1725) is known for an unrelenting procession of beautiful arias; Tamerlano (1724) offers a cracking plot, especially memorable for the second act climax where all the characters admit guilt in an ensemble number; but Giulio Cesare (1724) has the fastest moving plot and it's that dramatic momentum that helps transcend the formulaic structures of this genre. [...] In the overture Bicket and his players bring out the polarized inter...
