{"id":47976,"date":"2025-04-24T21:24:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/entertainment\/review-as-new-yorks-opera-scene-empties-another-rises-upstate\/24\/04\/2025\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T21:24:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:24:26","slug":"review-as-new-yorks-opera-scene-empties-another-rises-upstate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/entertainment\/review-as-new-yorks-opera-scene-empties-another-rises-upstate\/24\/04\/2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: As New York\u2019s Opera Scene Empties, Another Rises Upstate"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Upstate, Schlather has been unfurling a series of Handel productions with the terrific period-instrument ensemble Ruckus; \u201cCesare,\u201d running through May 2, comes on the heels of \u201cRodelinda\u201d<\/a> at Hudson Hall in 2023. It is a precious bastion of an ever rarer breed.<\/p>\n

His directorial style in dealing with this composer\u2019s works has gotten clearer with experience. \u201cAlcina\u201d and \u201cOrlando\u201d were always quirky, often thrilling and sometimes bewildering. But this substantially yet intelligently trimmed \u201cCesare\u201d \u2014 with intermission, it\u2019s just under three hours \u2014 is a stylishly straightforward account of a story of vengeance and lust set amid Julius Caesar\u2019s campaign to conquer both Egypt and Cleopatra. Hudson Hall has a proscenium, but Schlather\u2019s set pushes the action downstage in front of it with two angled walls painted iridescent black. Under Masha Tsimring\u2019s stark, shadow-throwing lighting, those walls twinkle like a starry sky.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But that virtuosity coexists with \u2014 indeed, is a vessel for \u2014 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 soprano Raha Mirzadegan, who as Sesto sings a floating rendition of the aria \u201cCara speme,\u201d has ever been in.)<\/p>\n

The soprano Song Hee Lee, wearing Terese Wadden\u2019s slinky, glittering Tina Turner-style miniskirts, molds her bright tone through one of opera\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Upstate, Schlather has been unfurling a series of Handel productions with the terrific period-instrument ensemble Ruckus; “Cesare,” running through May 2, comes