Giulio Cesare

Fall 2025

Composed and premiered in 1724, Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto had its first performances at The King’s Theater in Haymarket, London to overwhelming success.

“The opera is in full swing also, since Hendell’s new one, called Jules Césare has been put on. The house was just as full at the 7th performance as at the 1st,” wrote a contemporary review on March 10, 1724. Handel composed 8 areas and two accompanied recitatives each for Caesar and Cleopatra, played by the famous castrato Senesino (Caesar) and the famous soprano Francesca Cuzzzoni (Cleopatra).

As with most of his operas, Handel went on to make several revisions to the score for revivals, adding new arias and cutting others.

The story revolves around Caesar’s pursuit of his enemy Pompeo to Egypt. Cornelia, Pompeo’s wife, pleads with Caesar to spare her husband. He is just about to grant her wishes when Tolomeo brings Caesar the head of Pompeo. Sesto, Cornelia’s son vows to avenge his father’s death. Tolomeo’s sister, Cleopatra, desires to depose Tolomeo in order to become sole ruler of Egypt. She joins Cornelia and Sesto in their plans for vengeance and asks Caesar to assist her. Throughout all of this, Caesar falls in love with Cleopatra. Caesar escapes attempts of assasination by Tolomeo. Caesar and Cleopatra escape and are thought drowned and dead. Tolomeo finally captures her and Caesar eventually comes back to save her. Tolomeo is slain by Sesto because he forced himself onto Cornelia against her will. Caesar makes Cloepatra Queen of Egypt and returns to Rome.

We will spend our seminar discovering all the ways in which a da capo aria can be written as well as discover the history and development of Baroque opera from its infancy to London in the mid 1720’s. We will also learn about the original performers, the Italian opera in England and how it fared. The politics of opera at this time was as fascinating as the opera plots themselves. Please join us for a remarkable 8 class study of this great music and the history that made it all possible.

What To Expect

Each evening of the course, a professional 2-hour presentation is given with a complete 90-110 documentary video, where the student discovers the historical background, compositional and performance history of the work, as well as an in-depth compositional analysis of the work from the annotated scores of Dr. Briggs. These annotated scores are also offered for individual purchase so that each student may own their own annotated score of the work being studied.

Each evening begins and ends with greetings, comments and questions from the participants. After that, the documentary begins, during which time all participants watch and take notes. Questions about what you saw can be asked at the end of each evening or at the beginning of the next.

Students are encouraged to write privately to me as well. More often, this can be more beneficial as I can provide more information than in a question and answer period.

“To Be There, Or Not To Be There”

You do not have to attend the course when it meets on Monday and Tuesday evenings from 5 - 7 pm. You may sign up for the course and have access to the HD course videos, documents, pdf books, recordings and all scholarly documents made available during the course, and explore them at your leisure.

If you need to arrive late, you may also join the seminar at anytime after it starts or leave at anytime before it ends. You can come and go as is necessary for your busy schedule.

You are completely free to interact as you see fit. We are all busy and yet we all have the desire to learn and attend courses that often conflict with our schedules.

These courses are set up to accommodate your busy schedule. In this way, you won’t miss out on this wonderful experience.

Please don’t let your schedule dictate what you can learn!!

The Course in Context

Seminars in Music is a 3-week course (sometimes 4-weeks) which meets on Monday and Tuesday evenings from 5 - 7 pm, generally four times per year; roughly February-March, June, September and December. The course meets online through Zoom and offers in-depth studies in various masterworks by composers from Monteverdi through the great masters of the 20th and even the 21st century.

The course includes 6, 90-110 minute documentary videos covering the entire topic.

Each evening includes an “Interactive Video” in 1080 HD. This video includes questions and comments from those attending the Zoom meeting before and after the documentary video.

A 4K “Presentation” video of the documentary is also available without comments and questions from participants.

Therefore, you get 2 documentary videos that you can enjoy with or without comments and questions from participants.

Historical/analytical documents from all important periodicals and scholarly journals, letters, reviews, recordings, documentary videos, pdf books and many other documents are available for the student to download and keep for future study and reference.

No course, currently available anywhere, provides you with as much scholarly material as these courses do. It is simply impossible to absorb, read through, watch and get through all the material available to you. Thus, each course can be considered a near complete treatise on the subject.

The Annotated Score

For each work we study, I offer a copy of my own annotated score, which contains all of my analytic markings from years of teaching and studying the work. These annotated scores can help you understand the work better when studying on your own, as well as when we follow the score during the seminar. Each annotated score is a historical document filled with vital information for those interested in going beyond what can be covered in the course itself. You can purchase a PDF copy or a printed soft-bound copy of the annotated score. The price of the scores vary depending on the number of pages; usually from $60 - $175. Operas, oratorios and larger works are the most expensive, as they run in 400-500 pages of high quality digital color.