TheatreHD Opera Club in GUM Cinema. Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Premiere with Natalia Surnina

A Baroque opera is always a challenge for a director. How do you bring to life a work where characters "stand and sing"? The theatrical wizard Dmitry Chernyakov transforms the monumental "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" into a genuine psychological drama of the highest intensity, where plaster crumbles from the ceiling and walls shake from explosions. His dramatic intuition and unwavering trust in the score allow the director to masterfully extract endless surprises from the long-familiar material. And the majestic, grandiose music of Handel only intensifies the impression!

The stage is graced by the stellar performances of Christophe Dumaux (the self-assured ruler Caesar), Olga Kulchynska (the calculating seductress Cleopatra), and Yuri Mynenko (the cold-blooded psychopath Ptolemy).

Natalia Surnina will talk about why staging Baroque opera is so difficult for modern directors and how Chernyakov, by throwing his characters from one emotional extreme to another, skillfully controls the action on stage.