Ancient Egypt’s most famous queen, Cleopatra, has been reimagined countless times by artists, writers, musicians and film-makers. Elizabeth Taylor played her in the epic Hollywood film; Shakespeare wrote a play about her; and Handel lavished some of his most ravishing music on her in his opera Giulio Cesare.

In this event, which accompanies Opera North's new production of Handel's Giulio Cesareon the mainstage, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of a seminal cultural history of Cleopatra, examines the myth-making surrounding the legendary subject of 2000 years of erotic fantasy.

‘Cleopatra is still changing, and she will continue to do so as long as her name is remembered. The forces that have repeatedly transformed her image, the forces of anger and anxiety and covert desire, are still at their lethal work in the world’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett

‘Hughes-Hallett’s individual analyses are witty and insightful tours de force.’ London Review of Books