Semele (Handel) - Performance History

Performance History

Semele was first performed on 10 February 1744 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London, as part of a concert series held yearly during Lent. The audience naturally expected Bible-based subject matter; most oratorios, including most of Handel's, meet this expectation. But the amorous topic of Semele, which is practically a creation of the late Restoration Period, transparently drew on Greek myths, not Hebrew laws, and so it displeased those attending for a different kind of uplift. Being in English, Semele likewise irritated the supporters of true Italian opera. Winton Dean in his book Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios:

"The public found tone too close to that of the discredited Italian opera and set it down as an oratorio manqué; where they expected wholesome Lenten bread, they received a glittering stone dug from the ruins of Greek mythology."

As a result, only four performances took place. The cast at the première included Elisabeth Duparc (‘La Francesina’) in the title role, Esther Young as Juno (and Ino), and John Beard as Jupiter. Henry Reinhold sang the bass roles. Handel seems to have interchanged some of the music between singers.

Later, in December 1744, Handel rustled up two further performances, this time at the King's Theatre, after pandering to his critics with changes and additions that included interspersed arias in Italian (for the opera crowd) and the excision of sexually explicit lines (for the devoted).

20th century

Perhaps unsurely matched to the spirit of its time, Semele then fell into prolonged neglect until its first stage performances — in Cambridge, England, in 1925 and in London in 1954. These fueled an enthusiasm that has not since lapsed.

Semele was staged on four occasions (1959, 1961, 1964 and 1975) by the Handel Opera Society under Charles Farncombe, and it entered the repertory of the English National Opera (then Sadler’s Wells Opera) in 1970. The opera returned in 1982 — after a 238-year hiatus — to Covent Garden (the Royal Opera House), conducted, as at Sadler’s Wells, by Charles Mackerras.

The American stage première took place at the Ravinia Festival near Chicago in 1959. Semele was performed in Washington, DC, in 1980, and at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1985, on the latter occasion with Kathleen Battle in the title role and John Nelson conducting. (A recording with a similar cast was made in 1990 and issued on the Deutsche Grammophon label.)

21st century

Pinchgut Opera staged a production in 2002 in the City Recital Hall, Sydney, Australia, conducted by Antony Walker and directed by Justin Way. There is a recording of this production.

In 2004 a staged production directed by David McVicar and conducted by Marc Minkowski opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. (This was revived in 2010 by conductor Christophe Rousset.)

A new production opened at New York City Opera on 13 September 2006. Directed by Stephen Lawless, it made metaphorical references to Marilyn Monroe, U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Elizabeth Futral sang Semele, Vivica Genaux portrayed Juno (and Ino), and Robert Breault sang Jupiter.

Zurich Opera in Switzerland mounted Semele in 2007 as a vehicle for Cecilia Bartoli, with Birgit Remmert and Charles Workman as Juno and Jupiter and William Christie conducting. This staging was taped, issued as a Decca DVD, and successfully transferred (in 2010) to Vienna's Theater an der Wien.

Milwaukee's Florentine Opera company in 2009 staged a recreation of director John La Bouchardiere's earlier Scottish Opera production, conducted by Jane Glover at the Pabst Theater; it starred Jennifer Aylmer, Robert Breault, and Sandra Piques Eddy.

In September of the same year a new staging by the Chinese artist Zhang Huan, conducted by Rousset, with Les Talens Lyriques, opened at La Monnaie in Brussels. This moved, on 24 October 2010, to Beijing's Poly Theater as part of the Beijing Music Festival — the first major production of a baroque opera in the People's Republic of China. In May 2012 this production moved to the Canadian Opera Company, receiving generally poor reviews for having excised Handel's finale and haphazardly introducing Buddhist themes in an incongruent manner to the source material.