The past is dark and seductive.

Still half wrapped in gauze bandages, undead mummies trudge across the stage;

a huge statue of Anubis, the god of the dead, watches over the scene, a guard of black, dog-headed figures and their leader spread gothic uneasiness.

But a lively lady also climbs out of a sarcophagus, leaving her mummification residue-free behind, made up and adorned ready to go out.

She quickly turns out to be Cleopatra.

She is at odds with her brother Ptolomeo (both are still teenagers), and not about her deceased father's smartest chariot, but about the rulership of Egypt.

You don't want to put the crown on either of them, the snappy daughter just as little as the impetuous son,

who doesn't know what to do with his energy, stomping around wildly on the stage and relieving his chest, if not with high-voltage current coloratura, then with eruptive screams.

Already you start thinking about the use of drugs in ancient Egypt.

The past is not only dark and seductive, it is also full of comedy, as one learns from George Petrou, the new artistic director of the Handel Festival in Göttingen.

In the production of George Frideric Handel's opera "Cesare in Egitto" he not only conducts but also directs.

You don't have to take that as presumptuous.

What distinguishes Petrous' music-making with the extraordinarily supple festival orchestra can also be experienced on stage: courageous approach, balance of attention to detail and wide breath, and finally the desire for stylistic freedom.

Petrou plays with orientalisms in music and scene just as he dares to visit the neighborhood to see jazz – done so subtly that one gradually begins to lose faith in one's ears.

Then namely,

when Cleopatra's witty valet Nireno sings of the joys of spontaneous love.

Here the evening suddenly opens in the direction of travesty, Nireno dances and soon stands there in a glittering sequined dress.

It is a pity that Rafał Tomkiewicz, the singer of Nireno, cannot perform at short notice because of a positive corona test;

The fact that the assistant director Alexander de Jong steps in as a brilliant pantomime and Nicholas Tamagna, the actor of Ptolomeo, sings the aria reading from the tablet is more than an emergency solution.

De Jong's pantomime almost plays into the director's idea of ​​George Petrou, who set his production in the 1920s at the height of enthusiasm for Egypt and, together with stage designer and set designer Paris Mexis, brought opulent cinematic reality to the stage.

Cesare, in Göttingen, is an archaeologist in the style of Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamun.

With a colonial gesture, he pursues an archeology that is more like a treasure hunt.

The finds are intended to praise the discoverer and the country under whose flag he is flying.

This archaeologist-Cesare, who is particularly interested in his finds when he is photographed with them, is also breathtakingly condescending;

who later has to deal with the past he has invaded - and with the weapons of femininity that make him and his entourage look tolerably stupid.

All those who survive the intrigues and have survived their fear of death finally find seriousness.

Antiquity and modernity are reconciled in the spirit of progress,

when Cleopatra climbs into Cesare's biplane in flight gear at the end.

Such reconciliation and adaptation of the past can also be taken as an allegory for a festival that is completely dedicated to "early music".

Cesare is sung by countertenor Yuriy Mynenko with melodic power and virtuosic elegance.

The fact that Mynenko is Ukrainian and performs with a special permit from his country opens up new perspectives on Handel's play.

When Sesto, the son of the murdered Pompeo, struggles for encouragement and hears his dead father whisper to him: "My son, hardship is expected of you": who does not want to think about the discussions about the reactions to the war in Ukraine?

Katie Coventry sings this Sesto between boyish tenderness and youthful emotional ecstasy, Sophie Junker is a vocally sparkling Cleopatra, for whom the capricious sides are closer than the tragic passages;

here her voice loses grounding and cleanness of intonation.

Nicholas Tamagna brings Ptolomeo to the stage with tireless enthusiasm,

The friendly openness of this production on many sides can be understood programmatically for a festival that is trying to attract new audiences under the new director Jochen Schäfsmeier.

The support in the city for the Handel Festival, which was founded in 1920, is extremely impressive, reports Schäfsmeier, and yet efforts must be made to secure this support for the future.

The festival is therefore increasingly oriented outwards, adding new venues to the program and offering the Göttingen Handel around the clock: from the organ concert in the morning to the performances in the evening.

Addressing a younger audience is also the big challenge here.

With Petrou's "Cesare" staging, that should succeed, and the much older premiere audience is nothing short of over the moon.