Conductor Stefano Montanari
Director Damiano Michieletto
Set design Paolo Fantin
Costumes Agostino Cavalca
Lighting Alessandro Carletti
Orchestra of the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari

Bari, Teatro Petruzzelli
September 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 2025

Production Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
in co-production with
Théâtre des Champs-Élisées
Oper Leipzig
Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier-Occitanie
Capitole de Toulouse

Italian and English surtitles by Prescott Studio

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«A lonely, somewhat clumsy man who can’t seem to get anything right». This is how the director Damiano Michieletto describes the protagonist of Giulio Cesare in Egypt. «It seems that the drama unfolds around Julius Caesar, behind him. Ptolemy aspires to power and plunges into a spiral of cynicism; Cleopatra weaves plots and seductions; Sextus seeks to avenge his father and undergoes a process of generational maturation. In the midst of them, I see Caesar as almost a spectator, as if everything he had to achieve (conquests, glory, victories) were stages already completed on his journey. Händel portrays a man who is already old, and in historical reality he will die a few years after the events narrated in the opera, shortly after returning to Rome. He will suffer a conspiracy and betrayal, the same treatment reserved for Pompey at the beginning of the opera. In fact, Handel’s Julius Caesar is a drama about destiny, symbolized on stage by a trio of Fates who envelop the protagonist with their red threads and determine the length of his life. It is an opera in which the premonitions of death loom large, which the Roman general’s frivolous actions seem to want to ward off».