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Handel’s great 1724 opera is an equivocal creature, a sensuous celebration of love (well, lust) that frankly admits our lovebirds are self-interested, manipulative sharks using each other quite as cynically as everyone else in a drama that features some entertaining freaks and very few people you’d care to hang out with if it’s a long, quiet life you’re wanting.

The Blackwater Valley Opera Festival – formerly Lismore Opera Festival – has been running for 15 years, always under the artistic directorship of Dieter Kaegi, former boss at Opera Ireland. It’s a packed week of concerts, recitals and more, around various venues in this lovely lush corner of County Waterford along the River Blackwater, with the headline events taking place in the stableyard of the exceptionally castley Lismore Castle, one of the Duke of Devonshire’s joints. Since I was last here, the auditorium has grown a roof, which is probably sensible.

Inge Brocheler (Cesare) and Fionn O hAlmhain (Curio) in Giulio Cesare | Photo credit: John D Kelly

It felt quite a bold choice for this jovial Festival, whose operas over the years have tended more to the Figaro end of things. But Ireland had a strong Handel revival a few decades ago, led by James Conway’s Opera Theatre Company, and this long evening looked like a sell-out. Nor was it one of your flashy, crowd-pleasing JCs, along the lines of David McVicar’s Glyndebourne vaudeville: this was earnest, dark-hued, grown-up, even a tad low-octane – but with high musical values and strong direction, the power of Handel’s drama (with an exceptionally good script by his collaborator and cellist Nicola Haym) came across with some intensity.

The auditorium set-up is eccentric – the smallish (10 violins, etc) Irish Baroque orchestra way off to the left, conductor Nicholas McGegan communicating with the singers via monitor. The orchestral sound is distant, but good quality; the narrow raised stage basically unadorned except for a big Egyptian cat and (er, Roman?) hippo. The isolated singers effectively had to hold the audience through sheer force of personality – and did it.

Nils Wanderer (Tolomeo) in Giulio Cesare | Photo credit: John D Kelly

Director Tom Creed had a very psychological way of staging the long arias as expressions of character: Caesar (Ingeborg Bröcheler) psyching out the opposition through intense mental pressure, as when Tolomeo basically collapsed through sheer stress at being subjected to the torment of 10 minutes of ‘Va tacito’. The scanty words say one thing, but so much more is implied and conveyed – this is the absolute core of Handel’s power. Sesto’s Hamlet-like torment, and furious determination to turn himself from boy to pitiless avenger, was likewise brilliantly got over in Sharon Carty’s great performance, fighting with fear and indecision with concentrated, undemonstrative actorly art. Nils Wanderer’s Tolomeo was very peculiar, veering from epicene ultra-camp to boot-boy violence. Carolyn Holt handled Cornelia’s monomaniac misery sympathetically, and the smaller roles (there are no boring ones, unlike much opera seria) were absolutely central to the drama and delivered terrifically well.

Cesare stands or falls by its Cleopatra, of course – and Anna Devin, while not the absolute minxiest, covered all the bases of a complicated role, all sassy confidence in taunting Tolomeo and seducing Julius, then the sudden unexpected (to her and us) access of soul when she fears he is dead. Completely confident on stage, she was equally sure vocally across this range: not an enormous voice – and sometimes singing with extreme softness and delicacy – but totally secure in tone and feeling.

Sharon Carty (Sesto) and Carolyn Holt (Cornelia) with chorus | Photo credit: John D Kelly

There were a few vocal nerves showing on this first night, but confidence grew across the cast, and the rest of the singing was solid if not starry. Ms Bröcheler’s strong stage presence outshone her not-always confident mezzo, Tolomeo’s arias were delivered with increasing feline stylishness (and the raised profile of him and the smaller 'adviser' roles skewed the drama in interesting ways), and Cornelia and Sesto brought a real emotional heart to things with centred, rock-solid performances. Over in the distance, McGegan’s band played with a cultured bounciness, unafraid to take things strikingly slowly in the deeper arias, the virtuoso solos admirably done.

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