(Photo: Nancy Jesse) Few works have suffered more persistently from the legacy of Orientalist fantasy than Handel’s “Giulio Cesare in Egitto.” Ever since Columbia University academic Edward Said published “Orientalism” in 1978, the intellectual foundations underpinning Europe’s imaginative construction of “the East” have been subjected to relentless and often persuasive scrutiny. Said demonstrated that Orientalism was never merely an artistic {…}