Yet that shameless scavenger Handel plundered Pope for the words to Jove’s show-stopper, “Where’er you walk”. Here, as everywhere, admirably clear enunciation makes us realise what a jewel Handel had to hand in the pre-existing libretto for Semele by William Congreve, its verbal wit and metrical deftness several cuts above the operatic norm. Still, Harvey’s “O sleep, why dost thou leave me?” ravishes the senses, as does her fiery outpouring of want in “With fond desiring”. Thomas’s cowed, backbiting Thebes had convinced this more stylised bower of bliss, less so, despite the extravagant smooching. While Juno’s revenge brews, the rich string-driven textures of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – conducted by Václav Luks – showed off the sheer dramatic range and invention of Handel’s orchestral writing, with telling contributions all the way from William Carter’s theorbo.Īs for Jove and Semele’s brief idyll, it took us into a sun-dappled meadow where the hulking top god in his boxy yellow suit (Stuart Jackson) strives to keep up with his beloved’s bedroom stamina. Still, Harvey’s orgasmic aria “Endless pleasure” finds the right blended tone of drollery and sultriness, even if the suggestive gyrations of the chorus below push us towards Carry on up Olympus territory.Īs Iris, who brings the bad news about her husband’s escapades to Juno, the distinctive timbre of Samuel Mariño’s male soprano had plenty of celestial charm and high-wire agility (pictured above with Jennifer Johnston). After he abducts her, though, the Jeff Koons kitsch of the bed-bower in which he entertains his conquest soon puts us right. The slate-skied gloom of Thomas’s Thebes tells us why the embrace of sugar-daddy Jove might so thrill Semele. In the gods’ abode, meanwhile, Jennifer Johnston’s lavishly-head-dressed Juno broods and plots, a looming threat at every turn. Her warmth and refinement impressed from first to last. Jove’s thunderbolts prompt a virtuoso intervention from the chorus before the golden mezzo of Stephanie Wake-Edwards, as Semele’s sister Ino (pictured above with Jennifer Johnston's Juno), laments her own unrequited longing for Athamas (but why?) in a beautifully voiced and phrased “Turn, hopeless lover”. Thomas’s direction underscores his nervy, entitled arrogance. But for all his vocal skill, this remains a pretty thankless part. Nussbaum Cohen skips with anticipatory glee as he brings finesse, dexterity and authority to “Hymen, haste, thy torch prepare”. Groupthink becomes crowd movement as the beige hordes demand a sacrifice of liberty from the (at first) fine-toned but rather pinched Harvey. The Glyndebourne chorus, vocally powerful as ever but lent additional muscle by Emma Woods’s striking choreography, help to press and bully Semele into her forced marriage to Athamas: counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (pictured above with Joélle Harvey's Semele). ![]() The cost, arguably, comes in a loss of sparkle, wit and pace. It reinforces its reading via myriad details to conjure an enveloping atmosphere of fear and obedience, relieved only by the whims and desires of capricious deities. ![]() This, though, is a consistent and thoughtful interpretation of a gloriously eclectic piece. What she gains in pathos, even dignity, Joélle Harvey’s heroine arguably loses in brio and exuberance. Semele becomes not so much a flighty over-reaching bimbo, burned (literally) by her hubristic yearning for immortality, as a small-town rebel with big dreams, snared by the false promises and snobbish jealousies of the mighty. ![]() ![]() With its mingled genre – composed in 1744 as Handel shifted from Italianate music-drama to post- Messiah sacred stage tableaux – and dazzling stylistic mood-swings, Semele leaves plenty of scope for directors to stake their claim to comedy, romance, satire, even tragedy.įrom the overcast, oppressive lighting to the drab, earth-coloured 20th-century costumes of the chorus, in contrast to Semele’s defiant white, Thomas veers towards the dark side. Her dogged quest for revenge on her husband’s lover will drive the action of Handel’s hybrid opera-oratorio. He’s not the only one: the first of many lightning-bolts – designed by Peter Mumford with Rick Fisher – that flash around Annemarie Woods’s crepusular set illuminate lonely Juno, spurned and seething spouse of the heavenly overlord.
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