At the age of 27 Peter Sellars was hailed as a wunderkind of the U.S. theater and was already the general manager of the American National Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. In his productions, Sellars brings out the timelessness and topicality of the works with such naturalness that he arouses interest around the world and stimulates lively discussions as to whether he is brilliantly modernizing the works or brutally maiming them. Besides "Don Giovanni," Sellars has also staged "Le nozze di Figaro" and "Cosi fan tutte" and moved their stories to present-day New York, whereby, however, he invented a new world for each opera.

Director Peter Sellars helms this provocative adaptation of George Frideric Handel’s opera “Giulio Cesare,” sung in the original Italian by soprano Susan Larson (who plays Cleopatra) and countertenor Jeffrey Gall (in the role of Julius Caesar) but set in a very different locale: a futuristic Middle East. Sellars personally wrote the English subtitles included in this version to match the tone he intended for his vision.

We can readily imagine with what modest pride the 40-year-old Bach presented his second wife Anna Magdalena with this most delightful of all domestic scrapbooks. Bach himself started it off for her with two of the keyboard Partitas (A minor, BWV827 and E minor, BWV930) which later formed part of the collection published as the composer's Op. 1 in 1731. Thereafter it was up to Anna Magdalena herself to choose and to enter little compositions which made particular appeal. Not all the music by any means is by her husband and there are pieces for example by Couperin, Bohm, Stolzel, Hasse and her stepson Carl Philipp Emanuel as well as several by anonymous composers.

Charpentier’s Médée is one of the glories of the Baroque. Medea’s betrayal by Jason, her comprehensive revenge and the plight of those caught up in this epic tragedy prompted Charpentier to compose music of devastating power. Transcending the constraints of the Lullian tragédie lyrique, he produced characterisations of astonishing complexity and invested vast stretches of music with a dramatic pace and a harmonic richness rivalled among contemporaries only by Purcell. The electrifying exchanges of the third act, mingling pathos with extreme violence, alone put Charpentier on the same imaginative level as Rameau and Berlioz. The machinations of the fourth act and the dénouement in the fifth maintain the same captivating impetus.

The recent Glyndbourne staging of this oratorio demonstrated how well it worked as an opera, and this recording by Nicholas McGegan creates a similar dramatic intensity out of the tragic story of oppression and resistance. He finds excellent tempi for the arias, and keeps the recitatives cracking along at a good pace. And though he has a very good ensemble team of soloists, the star of the show is definitely soprano Lorraine Hunt (who, interestingly enough, sang the mezzo role of Irene for Glyndebourne) as Theodora. She uses the rich, throaty quality of her voice to bring out all the terrible pathos of Theodora's plight, while still suggesting that she is a character lit by an inner fire of joy. Unfortunately the acoustic lacks a certain bloom, and this makes the sound world sometimes seem a little flat and dry. And McGegan, while excellent on the accuracy of musical detail does not bring the same drama that Nikolaus Harnoncourt does to a "fury" number such as "Racks, Gibbets, Sword and Fire". Nevertheless, the singers make this a rendition definitely worth having.

–Warwick Thompson