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The opera that conquered London in Handel’s time comes to the Met in David McVicar’s inventive production—which triumphed at its Glyndebourne premiere in 2005. The Guardian praised McVicar’s “witty, sexy, and tragic post-colonial framing of Handel’s Caesar and Cleopatra tale,” which incorporates elements of Baroque theater and 19th-century British imperialism to illuminate the opera’s ideas of love, war, and empire building. The world’s leading countertenor, David Daniels, sings the title role opposite Natalie Dessay as an irresistibly exotic Cleopatra. Baroque specialist Harry Bicket conducts.