We sat down with Hugh Cutting, performing as Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare. For ticketing and info, please find here.
Tolomeo is often portrayed as a villain driven by excess and volatility. How do you approach giving psychological or emotional coherence to a character who can so easily tip into caricature?
We all act in certain ways for specific reasons, so that’s got to be the root of characters on stage. I think it’s the job of a production to make sense of a story, and make it speak – productions that don’t seem to ‘make sense’ or that make the audience question ‘why is that happening?’ can leave audiences a bit cold. That doesn’t mean opera has to be grounded in realism in terms of the world of the story itself – I love the magical space of theatre where normal physical rules might be suspended because there’s a witch or magician in play (Handel’s magic operas like Alcina, Orlando, and Rinaldo are a case in point) – but I think the emotional and psychological discourse of the story and characters should be real, it should be relatable and imaginable.
With that in mind, you have to think WHY Tolomeo acts the way he does, why he says the things he says. He’s high status, he’s got everything he’s wanted so far in life, and he’s a boy – if you’ve seen Joffrey in Game of Thrones, there’s a line to be drawn between them. I don’t think he needs to be caricature – people like him absolutely exist in the real world – it’s just about finding a worldview that makes sense through Tolomeo’s eyes based on his experiences and beliefs about himself. Caricature and novelty are not what’s going to make opera worthwhile or particularly telling; it’s the human element of these characters that’s fascinating to watch.
Human beings aren’t morally black and white, there’s all this internal dialogue – Tolomeo will think he’s entitled to the world, not that he’s the villain. People watch The Traitors because we like watching people try to function and get what they need; opera and theatre should be a platform for looking at human beings like this, examining the choices we all make, and why them make them.
Writing a eulogy is both deeply personal and strangely performative. What did that tension unlock for you as a solo performer?
The tension between the personal and the performative unlocked a radical honesty for me. In a eulogy, an intimate and personal relationship is expected to be publicly available. Then we feel a social pressure to present a coherent, “acceptable” version of the deceased and our relationship with them. We rarely see adults being their true, contradictory selves in their most vulnerable moments. By leaning into the theatricality of it, I found the freedom to explore the blurred lines my character encounters, but also those shared between me as the performer and my character. The stage gives me permission to tap into the darkest, most fleeting parts of my psyche without the fear of social fallout. As a solo performer, I get to embrace the “whole rollercoaster ride.” Early on, the challenge was not letting the words destroy me. I had to learn how to be deeply connected to the grief while maintaining the craft of the performance. Ultimately, this tension transformed the play into a vessel for catharsis. In a way that in the writing process it hadn’t brought me. I wonder what kind of collective healing we would find if we all allowed ourselves to be this raw and unfiltered during our final goodbyes.
Your repertoire spans early music and contemporary work – what specific vocal or stylistic freedoms does Handel offer you that later repertoire does not?
Handel is thrilling to sing because it’s both so rich in terms of what we already have in the score AND because there’s room beyond that. The predominant structure of baroque opera is the da capo aria; the music and text are arranged with an A-B-A shape, and the singer can ornament and alter melodic lines when they return to the second A section. It follows that there’s a lot of freedom in that, and it’s a great opportunity to use it for character work / development. The main emotional idea is stated in the A section, then the B section is used to add to it / reflect on it / turn it over etc, and then the return of the A is a chance to relook at the initial idea through the lens of the B section. I think it’s a perfect vehicle for showing how we all mentally process; it’s rare that we don’t circle thoughts / decisions / feelings, so Handel is helpful in this regard. I think it’s very human music, sophisticated and nuanced in the way it allows us to process emotion through multiple layers in a single aria, let alone in a whole opera.
Vocally, I love Handel because I feel it demands a lot across various spectrums. You need a good mix of power (to be heard over substantial orchestral textures) and flexibility (for carrying off fioritura / coloratura / fast note passages), and you need enough sensitivity to never make the music academic or purely technical.
This production marks your Grange Festival Debut. What does performing Handel in an intimate festival setting like The Grange allow you to explore that larger opera houses might not?
In a very practical sense, I’m hoping we can use the small size of the theatre to go to some extremes of dynamic; it’s a gift when you feel you don’t have to be pumping everything out at maximum volume!
The intimacy of the space should also mean that we can experiment with precision of timing and details in the staging as well. It’s a shame when operas become mainly about massive hand gestures and purely loud singing. I’ve definitely been there – I cringe when I see myself doing the dreaded ‘opera hand’ when it’s clear I haven’t done enough work to find a more specific gesture to articulate what I’m singing about – and I’m definitely not saying this isn’t a trap we all fall into at times. Maybe the small size of The Grange’s theatre can reduce that sort of temptation to ‘show’ rather than ‘be’.
Countertenor roles often negotiate power through vocal colour rather than sheer volume. How do you think vocal timbre functions dramatically in portraying authority or menace in Giulio Cesare?
IThere’s a lot of vocal interest in this piece; so many of the roles are higher voices (the only lower voice is Achilla) and yet despite that, there’s a huge variety of vocal colours through these different high-voiced characters.
The role of Cesare himself is in an alto range and it’s sung by both men and women. I love the multiplicity of this – we should absolutely have versions of roles like Cesare, and not just depending on the sex of the performers who embody him, but within that, the individual colours, strengths, idiosyncrasies of the singers in question. I think it’s fascinating to look at a singer and work out ‘what’s your version of this character?’ Casting teams who fail to see the options afforded by different individuals are missing out, I think; there are obviously vocal standards and necessities of given roles, but I really believe that there’s no reason as to why we can’t have variations on a theme when it comes to casts.
Cesare absolutely needs to hold authority, and the type of leader he is might be determined by his vocal heft or vocal control (or both); will he be a swashbuckling, terrifying and domineering character or a calm, calculating and empowering general? It feels like theatre really understands this – if you look at the variety of actors who have portrayed Hamlet in recent years, or Lady Macbeth, you can quickly understand how there are so many ways of reading and interpreting a script. Perhaps it’s sensible to say that Opera (theatre) gives us tools, not instructions.
With that in mind, I think timbre plays a significant part in this piece; Cesare, Tolomeo, Cornelia, Niremo all operate is a very similar range, and they’re vastly distinct roles – the general, the boy-king, the widow, the servant. Clearly, we need timbre to help articulate these personalities, combined with a director’s vision that clearly delineates who is who. That said, I don’t think you should try and make your sound / timbre fit a role, but rather mould the role around your own voice; of course it’s a two way street in that the role can inform your vocal delivery, but ultimately I think it’s more interesting to use your own vocal strengths and colour as a means of finding the version of the character that will be most convincing in your body. Conductors also have a fine line to negotiate here: we need musical directors who aren’t so prescriptive that it saps the individuality out of characters, but that are firm enough to enforce the director’s vision of the piece. We need characters built on coherence and specificity, not a cast divided by default into goodies and baddies; working with individuals and their own natural timbre is one of the answers to that.
Looking at your broader career trajectory, how do you decide when a role is an opportunity for vocal display versus a chance for deep dramatic risk?
I’m going to be a broken record here and say that I’m not that fussed about seeing or singing vocal fireworks if it’s not linked to the broader context of what’s going on in an opera. Sure, it’s fun to marvel at someone’s skill, but I find that after a few minutes of purely that sort of performing I’m hungry for something deeper. Virtuoso singing in that way can (and this obviously isn’t always the case) become more about the performer than about the character – perhaps it can be about both in an integrated performance. For me, the voice should be a vehicle for communicating something human, something that reaches out to an audience and makes them relate or understand a situation / person.
Historically, this isn’t what opera has always been about; the castrati and divas of Handel’s time were specifically meant to show off their virtuoso technique in their da capo arias; their technical skill was a marvel in itself and a big part of the attraction of Handel’s work in London. ‘Entertaining’ in this way should absolutely be part of our experience when we witness classical music, but I just think that we have an opportunity now to push opera beyond something that’s hyper focused on stars and divas and vocal display for its own sake. Instead, we’ve got a chance to bring an audience into a world built around music and a story about humanity; it can be both escapism and emotional allegory, both are possible. In a world of Netflix and streaming, I don’t think we should spend time on telling stories on stage that aren’t interesting, nuanced, engaging, and relatable. And music is surely one of the most useful tools for this, able to articulate that variety of human experiences through sound.
When I’m looking at roles in the future, I consider it them terms of the voice – I want to know that I can physically do it (or that I WILL be able to do it, in time!), that it’s in a decent range for my voice – and that the character has some dramatic interest or arc. You can always find moments to display your technique when you have narrative reason. In opera, your voice IS the vehicle for your character.