Copenhagen. (International).

Even after four and a half hours of Royal Danish Opera's Giulio Cesare in Egitto (seen May 4, 8, 18, 22), the audience could not let go. The production made such an impact that it seemed opera in Denmark would never be the same; by the end of its all-too-short run (eight performances), fans camped in the street all night, hoping to acquire one of ten available tickets. Baroque opera is not daily fare in Copenhagen, certainly not as interpreted by original instruments or men with "girlish," treble voices. The landslide of historically informed practice that has swept the world for the past thirty years clearly missed Denmark. (Previously, Giulio Cesare had been performed in the theater only once, in 1947.)

Director Francisco Negrin has staged Cesare already (for Opera Australia and Los Angeles Opera), and clearly he feels stimulated by the story and the music. He served up a musical, gloriously entertaining mix of Asterix-style cartoonery and technically inventive neo-Baroque (wonderful opulent settings by Negrin himself and Anthony Baker). The staging offered both regal elegance and war-torn desolation: thrones were catapulted high into the air, buildings sliced in half to reveal a seashore for Caesar's "Dall'ondoso periglio." Memorably, a gigantic shark in an aquarium acted as sole witness to Cornelia's lamentations in "Cessa omai di sospirare."

Baroque style is alien to most Royal Opera singers, so the management imported three very different countertenors: Andreas Scholl (Caesar), Christopher Robson (Tolomeo) and James Huw Jeffries (Nireno). Scholl was phenomenal. Despite his limited stage experience, he achieved a dazzling ebb and flow in his performance, almost cinematic in its subtlety, always subservient to the drama. His Caesar was a smooth talker, not bellicose by nature, always ready to flirt with Cleopatra--or with the brilliant Finnish violinist Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen, who played the ...