Antony & Cleopatra

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Image courtesy of Liceu.

She was his queen. He was her undoing. 

This two-act opera, commissioned for the centennial of the San Francisco Opera, is a co-commission and co-production with the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. With a libretto adapted by the composer himself from Shakespeare’s tragedy, composer John Adams, director Elkhanah Pulitzer and playwright Lucia Scheckner combine the mythic image of antiquity with the glamour of 1930s Hollywood.  

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, Antony and Cleopatra is the only one that merges a love drama, a power drama and comedy in a single play. A highly ambitious creation about the archetypal love affair between the two protagonists, as well as geo-strategy in the midst of the decline of the Ancient Republic and rise of the Roman Empire (personified by the young Octavian (Augustus) Caesar). The resonance with today’s world of declining democratic values and shifting international loyalties is provocative and very timely. 

Cleopatra is the most psychologically textured character of all the Shakespearean female roles. Her extraordinary human qualities are expressed throughout the play: narcissism, intelligence, capacity for seduction and eroticism, ethical ambivalence, military bravery, indulgence and, ultimately, her true capacity to love. However, in her love game with Antony, she reveals real human vulnerability that transcends her self-control. Immersed in a conflict: her love for Antony and the struggle to remain in power; when she realizes her defeat, full of scars impossible to erase, she chooses suicide over the humiliation of being brought back to Rome as a trophy of Caesar’s military triumph. 

The action takes place in approximately 31-30 BC and alternates between two locations: Alexandria and Rome, although the production employs a variety of devices to connect the audience to the contemporary world. Through this journey, we witness the transformation of two god-like figures, Cleopatra/Isis and Antony/Hercules, into real lovers in all their fragility, intimacy and uncertainty. He was a Roman general; she was an Egyptian queen. Their passion would redefine the world order. 

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