San Francisco.(Giulio Cesare)

Created for English National Opera in 1979, John Copley's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare has made appearances in Geneva, New York (at the Met) and at San Francisco Opera (in 1982, and again for this revival). Unfortunately, John Pascoe's gaudy sets now appear rather too conspicuously a product of their time, with a Trump-like sense of proportion and propriety ill-suited to the music's essential intimacy and emotional precision. Some details of the production, such as Cesare's entrance into Cleopatra's luxurious boudoir, are impressive, but others are distracting. The sinuous, mincing movements of Tolomeo's half-naked male attendants, for example, seem gratuitous, as does the tired Hollywood trick of portraying the bad guy as a homosexual.

Luckily, the singing more than made up for any disappointments with the production. David Daniels's sound is not large, but his performance was heroic, philosophic, romantic--all that one would expect from a Cesare. Few singers today phrase with such naturalness and possess such solid rhythmic assurance; he must be a conductor's dream. Ruth Ann Swenson's Cleopatra was an excellent foil for his ...