Handel in Hudson
R.B. Schlather Captures Handel's Spirit with a Fresh View
By: Susan Hall - May 02, 2025
Hudson Hall in Hudson, New York, presents Handel’s Giulio Cesare as part of its ambitious celebration of the composer’s forty operas—each of which will eventually be staged here. It’s an exciting prospect.
Unless you're prepared (at great cost) to build a set like Franco Zeffirelli's Aida, choosing a timeless background is a smart choice. It suits contemporary tastes and allows a historical story to be more easily translated to the present. Setting the opera “out of time” highlights its emotional universality.
Director R. B. Schlather has created a stark, evocative set: high black walls meet at a central angle, where the opera’s women in distress—Cleopatra and Cornelia among them—pin themselves, dramatically underscoring their anxiety. Lighting plays across these surfaces, shifting their texture and mood. In the second half, a vertical window opens in the stage-left wall, revealing moments of action; later, a horizontal panel opens, and characters crawl into view.
This physical staging matches the visceral movement of the performers, who often creep, crawl, or dart about the stage like animals caught in history’s trap. Actors enter and exit via a catwalk that extends from the stage to the back of the theater, slicing the audience in two and creating an immediate, touchable connection between performers and viewers.
Davon Rainey frames the opera. She opens with a flourish—like a quotation mark—introducing the production with the flair of Josephine Baker strutting in a Paris nightclub. She wears a crown of glorious peacock feathers. Throughout the performance, Rainey becomes punctuation incarnate: an exclamation point, a period, ellipses, slashes. She is playful and captivating—a living commentary on the music and the drama.
Song Hee Lee plays Cleopatra with charm and ease. She says her beautiful voice is a gift of nature—a coloratura born, not made. If she’s worked hard, you’d never know it. She brings to mind Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of Shaw’s Cleopatra for Gabriel Pascal—witty, sparkling, and slowly growing into her queenliness.
Randall Scotting, as Caesar, and Chuanyuan Liu, as Tolomeo (Cleopatra’s brother and Pompey’s murderer), sing in the countertenor range originally intended for castrati. Both are commanding and expressive. Raha Mirzadegan is compelling as Sesto (a trouser role), capturing youthful determination and pathos in equal measure.
Yes, there’s murder and mayhem aplenty—but the production is cohesive, swift-moving, and deeply engaging throughout.
Handel gained wider American recognition when Iestyn Davies performed Saul in Farinelli and the King on Broadway. Known in his own time for his wit and rumored affairs, Handel had a flair for understanding complex relationships. This Hudson Hall production embraces that spirit, reveling in the fun of both sex and music.
Schlather, the mastermind behind Handel in Hudson, collaborates with Ruckus, a baroque band that spices up the score with synthesizer groans and jazzy rhythms—without losing the core of Handel’s sound.
The best opera productions are shaped by a unified vision. Here, R. B. Schlather is both Handel's and Caesar’s man of the moment. One could imagine Caesar himself declaring of him: Venit, vidit, vincit—he came, he saw, he conquered.
Hudson Hall is a welcome force in the Berkshires' operatic landscape. Performances of Giulio Cesare continue—tickets are available here.