As recently as 1985, when the music world sang hallelujahs for George Frideric Handel’s 300th birthday, the composer’s 40-plus operas mostly languished in the archives like so many white elephants—a species not so much endangered as totally ignored. Well, that was then. At a trifecta of Handel revivals that July at Pepsico Summerfare in Purchase, New York, a staging of Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) by that gadfly par excellence Peter Sellars was decisive in turning the tide. Rather than go the then-prevalent antiquarian route, Sellars updated. Opposite a Cleopatra straight from an M.G.M. soundstage, he gave us a Julius Caesar modeled (post-Watergate) on the still-living Richard M. Nixon in something like his prime. Damiano Michieletto’s new production promises imagery of “somber beauty” (shades of the Nile Scene in Aida!?). The Baroque specialist Christophe Rousset leads the virtuosi of his excellent period band Les Talens Lyriques. Elizabeth DeShong, endowed with a true contralto’s timbre of royal purple, stars as Caesar. Can’t wait to hear her trading phrases with the horn soloist in Caesar’s showstopper “Va tacito e nascosto,” conjuring up a wily hunter as he stalks his prey. —Matthew Gurewitsch