Embodiment of Love in Handel's Opera Giulio Cesare

Abstract

By studying metaphors of love in Handel´s opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto, I will introduce how it is depicted by the protagonists´ arias; via Cleopatra´s and Caesar´s musical relations, as a prevailing message. The atmospheric tone paintings set to the musical highlights of the protagonist arias answer the questions: how is love defined in Giulio Cesare? What kind of musical signs of love are there to be found and what will they tell us? Love is an essential theme in the work because the arias` foci are interlocked by the affectual tensions. These have encouraged various performance views of the work, for instance: ENO´s “epoch” depiction in 1984; Sellar´s “satirical” version in 1990; and Glyndebourne`s “colonialist” perspective in 2005. I apply the theory of af-fects in music appearing in the writings by Handel´s colleague Johann Mattheson (Das Neu=Eröffnete Orches-tre, 1713) grounded on Classic Aristotelian and Cartesian ideals (Aristotle´s Rhetoric, Descartes´ es passions de l e) (Suominen, July & September 2010). It also relates to so called Hippocratic-Galenic four elements, temperaments or humours theory by which I will show the different representations of the opera´s characters as a cathartic (ethic, Lutheran based) implication by Handel.