Georg Friedrich Haendel: Semele

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Georg Friedrich Handel: Semele
Opera in three acts
Libretto by William Congreve based on Ovid's Metamorphoses
Premiered at the Theater Royal, Covent Garden, London, on February 10, 1744

Director: Floris Visser
Sets and costumes: Gideon Davey
Lights: Alex Brok
Choir conductor: Carsten Wiebusch
Dramaturgy: Klaus Bertisch

Semele: Jennifer France
Jupiter: Ed Lyon
Athamas: Terry Wey
Juno: Katharine Tier
Ino: Dilara Baştar
Iris: Hannah Bradbury
Cadmus: Ks. Edward Gauntt
Somnus: Yang Xu
Cupid: Ilkin Alpay

Christopher Moulds, conductor
Deutsche Handel-Solisten
Handel-Festspielchor

In the early 1740s, the George Frideric Handel's concerts in London consisted mainly of oratorios given at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Several of them, such as Israel in Egypt (composed in 1738), Messiah (1741) and Samson (1743), featured some resemblance to Greek tragedy, which led Handel to venture into the world of classical drama.

Handel took the libretto that William Congreve had written for John Eccles' opera Semele (1707), and composed the music in one month, from June 3 to July 4, 1743. The work naturally takes the form of an opera, but Handel sees the possibility of giving it during the series of Lenten concerts at the Royal Theater in February 1744, knowing that this series would ensure the creation of the work and a fee. He therefore adapted the latter to present it “in the manner of an oratorio”. In 1760, in his biography of Handel, John Mainwaring would indicate "Semele is an English opera, but called an oratorio, and performed as such." His stratagem did not please the organizers of the series, which led to few performances and to hold Semele for a long time, wrongly, for a concert piece, of which choirs are still the champions. The libretto of the playwright Congreve, developed by Alexander Pope, and the music implicitly authorize us to think that it is more an opera than an oratorio. As Lord Harewood said: "...the music of Semele is so varied, the recitatives so expressive, the orchestration so original, the characterisation so clever, the general degree of invention so high, the action so full of credible situations and incidents, the work as a whole is so suitable for an operatic stage that one can only suppose that opera companies have neglected it out of renunciation."

Semele was premiered on February 10, 1744 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London as part of the annual Lenten concert series. The audience naturally expected a biblical subject; most of the oratorios, including most of Handel's , met this expectation. But the subject of Semele's love affair, which is practically a creation of the late English Restoration period, is clearly drawn from Greek mythology, not from Hebrew law: it therefore displeases those who expected a source of 'different inspiration. Being in English, Semele also irritates the supporters of true Italian opera. In his book Handel's Dramatic Oratorios, Winton Dean writes: "In 1744 the public considered the tone of Semele too close to that of the opera Italian discredited and called the work a failed oratorio; while he expected wholesome Lenten bread, he received a shiny stone extracted from the ruins of Greek mythology."

Handel therefore gives only four performances. The first cast consisted of Elisabeth Duparc (nicknamed La Francesina) in the title role, Esther Young as Juno (and Ino) and John Beard as Jupiter. Henry Reinhold ( en) sang the bass roles. It seems that Handel exchanged some of the music between the singers.

Later, in December 1744, Handel gave two more performances, this time at the King's Theatre, after bowing to the critics by making additions and alterations such as interspersing Italian arias (for opera lovers) and removing sexually explicit lines (for devotees).