There are works that do not falter today because of any intrinsic weakness, but because our contemporary listening has lost the patience for dramatic forms that offer no immediate gratification. Cesare in Egitto by Geminiano Giacomelli, revived by Alpha Classics under the direction of Ottavio Dantone, belongs to that repertoire which does not ask to be loved: it demands to be understood.
It offers no shortcuts, grants no seductions, sheds no easy light for those who seek applause. Instead, it asks for a listening capable of recognising that, in 1735, theatre was not yet psychology but responsibility.

Giacomelli stands at a decisive moment in the history of Italian music: the last fire of the pre-Metastasian era, when the rhetoric of the affections was no longer Monteverdian exuberance nor the perfected geometry of reformist opera. His language seems held back by an inner force that prefers insistence to variety, weight to expansion, decision to emotion.
A music that does not seek to seduce, but to hold, like a riverbank resisting the force of the current.

His Cesare is not the one most familiar to our theatrical habits. Here the protagonist is not the seduction of power, but its solitude. We do not find the brilliance of the commander who conquers and charms: we find the man who bears his role like an inevitable cuirass.
It is a Cesare without exhibitionism, yet dense, concentrated, vigilant: a character who does not explain himself, but imposes himself.

The most famous aria, Col vincitor mio brando, is often reduced—out of laziness—to a display of martial bravura. In truth it is a dramatic self-portrait: not a triumph, but a confession. The coloratura does not glitter; it weighs. The tessitura does not exalt; it presses. The breath does not run; it resists.
Here victory is not a boast: it is a burden exposed by the voice without rhetoric, revealing a moral tension rather than a military triumph.
The sword does not shine: it hangs.

Within this framework, the choice of interpreters assumes a decisive dramaturgical role. And the new Alpha recording achieves a rare coherence, for every voice acts not as an isolated individuality but as part of a scenic organism.

Arianna Vendittelli’s Cesare deserves particular mention. Not only for her technical solidity, the precision of her vocal gesture, or the natural command of agility: what matters is the dramaturgical idea underpinning it. The line does not merely sustain the character: it creates him. The emission, always supervised, seems to define a moral code rather than a theatrical dynamic. Vendittelli does not seek to enlarge Cesare: she concentrates him.
The result is a portrait of dry, almost implacable nobility, in which power is never flaunted but carried—like an ancient weight—with a lucidity that belongs only to the most conscious interpreters.

Emöke Baráth’s Cleopatra is a figure of rare musical intelligence. She does not abandon herself to seduction as an outward gesture; she transforms it into strategy. The phrasing is a continuous fabric, supple yet vigilant, capable of moving from enamelled brightness to an inward, almost meditative concentration. Every legato seems preceded by a thought; every ornament is an act of interpretation, not a concession to charm.

Margherita Maria Sala’s Cornelia brings into the drama a gravity that never sinks into lamentation. The quality of the timbre, dark yet transparent, gives grief a vertical, composed form that asks not for empathy but for respect. Her scenic presence—even through the microphone—preserves a nobility the character rarely receives in modern performances.

Valerio Contaldo’s Tolomeo is constructed with sharp lucidity. The voice never lapses into caricature, never indulges in easy venom: it cuts. In the recitatives the word has surgical precision; in the arias Contaldo measures tension with intelligence, avoiding the grotesque and seeking a controlled coldness that makes the character surprisingly modern.

Filippo Mineccia’s Achilla finds the balance between strength and restraint. The voice has a consistency that never becomes opaque; his ambition is rendered through inner tension, not through inflated gesture. This Achilla does not explode: he presses. And that pressure gives the role an unexpected depth.

Federico Fiorio’s Lepido, though a minor role, provides that touch of rhetorical clarity which binds together the narrative’s finer threads. Fiorio sings with elegance and precision, restoring to the character a dignity often overlooked.

Above all, Ottavio Dantone’s direction casts a long and necessary shadow. There is no gesture seeking the surface; no tempo chosen to seduce; no palette displayed as orchestral virtuosity. His reading carves rather than paints.
The tempi advance with firm, almost inexorable inner logic; the dynamics breathe as part of the drama and not as decoration; Accademia Bizantina sculpts every line with the finest attention, rejecting every ornamental softness.

There is no philological fetishism here: there is historical consciousness.
No baroque picturesque: but dramatic order.
And it is precisely this choice that restores to Cesare a vitality that more hedonistic readings can hardly sustain.

Alpha Classics performs an editorial act that is not ornamental but historiographical: placing this title alongside the major rediscoveries of recent years not as a curiosity but as a missing tile in the mosaic of the Italian eighteenth century.
This is not revival: it is restitution.

And thus this Cesare appears for what it has always been: a drama that grants no easy variety, a theatre that does not distribute cheap emotion, a scenic machine that does not shine—it burns.
The work does not seek to be loved. It asks to be respected.
And this recording restores not only a voice, but a face, a posture, a destiny.

In a time that consumes everything with fierce rapidity, a work that refuses immediacy becomes almost an act of resistance.
A theatre that does not flatter its audience but forces it to grow.