Opera isn’t for everyone, R. B. Schlather says. It’s for anyone. Now a director in demand from Oslo to Santa Fe, Schlather fell in love with the genre as a boy in Cooperstown, New York, seat of the bucolic Glimmerglass Festival. Today he resides across the Hudson River in the historic town of the same name, founded in 1783, now an enclave for rusticating artsy types. Where better than the Greek Revival social hub known as Hudson Hall to create a new stage for Schlather’s beloved George Frideric Handel, whose arias, he says, stop time? In 2023, his production of Rodelinda, which played to sellout audiences of 271, punched way above its weight. This year’s attraction is the even surer-fire Giulio Cesare, starring the strapping countertenor Randall Scotting as the Roman conqueror and the soprano Song Hee Lee as his wily Queen of Egypt. The original-instruments band Ruckus, which rocked in Rodelinda, is on hand to rock again. Schlather likes to involve the whole community, and this he does with much ingenuity, not only by favoring local talent but by opening rehearsals to anyone interested and scheduling weekday matinees that appeal to local constituencies as well as day-trippers from the Big Apple. And how hip will his production be? “No togas, no cell phones,” Schlather told AIR MAIL recently. “To me, Giulio Cesare feels almost like a sleazy action-adventure paperback novel. So, we’re looking at giving it a 1970s pulp-fiction blockbuster quality.” —Matthew Gurewitsch