Giulio Cesare

Composer: Handel Director: David Mcvicar Conductors: William Christie and Jonathan Cohen

Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex (01273-815000). Until 28 July

Running time: 5hrs 40mins (including intervals)

Most “legendary” productions survive only in the memory and “the few that live on tend to feel whiskery”, said Mark Valencia on What’s On Stage. But here’s one that “dances like a young ’un”. David Mcvicar’s 2005 staging of Handel’s glorious take on Julius Caesar and Cleopatra – in which the director has much anachronistic fun updating the action to 1880s colonial-era Egypt – was “seminal” in showing how a bold director can make four hours of “recitative and da capo arias zing by in a twinkling”. The premiere of this very welcome revival began at 2.45 and – taking into account Glyndebourne’s “jeroboamsized” meal breaks – ended at 8.25pm. “And I don’t know where the time went.”

Part of the cleverness of the production, with its witty designs by Robert Jones, lies in its “seamless marriage of high tragedy with slapstick comedy”, said Michael Church in The Independent. The invading marines are “pure Gilbert and Sullivan”; the Ottoman servants “straight out of The Illustrated London News”. Mcvicar’s delightful staging is blessed with a supple, dextrous cast who are more than capable of handling the shifts in tone. Countertenor Christophe Dumaux makes for an acrobatic Tolomeo, who can “conjure up sight-gags while singing with impeccable smoothness. As Nireno, Kangmin Justin Kim physically mimes a coloratura trill. Sarah Connolly is less powerful than she was, but she plays Caesar with a beautifully light touch – sardonic and debonair, said Richard Fairman in the FT. With William Christie seducing the orchestra into his brand of elegant, flexible Handel, there’s “nothing not to like”.

Most “stunning” of all is American soprano Joélle Harvey, whose Cleopatra is a triumph of singing, dancing and acting, said William Hartston in The Daily Express. I have never witnessed a theatre so silent as when Harvey sang the great Piangerò aria. She is so transfixing I can’t help feeling that if Richard Burton had seen her as Cleopatra, “he would never have bothered with Elizabeth Taylor”.