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Semele (Handel)

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For the opera by Eccles, see Semele (Eccles). For the opera by Marais, see Sémélé.

Template:Handel operasSemele (HWV 58) is a 1743 opera (initially presented as an oratorio) in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It is based on the classical myth of Semele, mother of Dionysus.

Background

In the early 1740s, oratorios at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, were George Frideric Handel’s chief concert activity in London. Several of them — Israel in Egypt (written 1738), Messiah (1741) and Samson (1743), for instance — bore some semblance to Greek tragedy, and this led Handel to venture into the world of classical drama.

He took up William Congreve's libretto for the 1707 John Eccles opera Semele, writing the music in a month, from June 3 to July 4, 1743. The work naturally took shape as an opera, but Handel eyed a place for it on the Theatre Royal's oratorio-centered Lenten concert series the following February (1744), knowing that this would secure the work's first performance and enable him to get paid. So he fashioned Semele for presentation "in the manner of an oratorio" — a wolf in sheep's clothing.

His ploy did not delight the organizers of the series, resulting in few performances, and it created a spurious and long-lasting identity for Semele as a concert piece, one championed and "claimed" even today by choral groups. That the work is more an opera than an oratorio is implicit in playwright Congreve's libretto, amplified by Alexander Pope, and in the score. As the late Lord Harewood put it:

" ... the music of Semele is so full of variety, the recitative so expressive, the orchestration so inventive, the characterization so apt, the general level of invention so high, the action so full of credible situation and incident — in a word, the piece as a whole is so suited to the operatic stage — that one can only suppose its neglect to have been due to an act of abnegation on the part of opera companies."

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 [in 1744] found [Semele's] 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

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 September 13, 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[disambiguation needed] 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.[1] 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.[2]

Roles

Role Voice type Premiere Cast, 10 February 1744
(Conductor: Georg Friedrich Handel)
Jupiter tenor John Beard
Cadmus, King of Thebes bass Henry Reinhold
Semele, daughter to Cadmus, belov'd
by and in love with Jupiter 		soprano Elisabeth Duparc ("La Francesina")
Athamas, a prince of Bœotia, in love
with, and design'd to marry Semele 		alto Daniel Sullivan
Ino, sister to Semele, in love with Athamas mezzo-soprano Esther Young
Somnus bass Henry Reinhold
Apollo tenor John Beard
Juno mezzo-soprano Esther Young
Iris soprano Christina Maria Avoglio
High priest bass Henry Reinhold
Chorus of priests, augurs, loves, zephyrs, nymphs, swains and attendants

Arias

  • "Hymen, haste, thy torch prepare!" (Act 1, Athamas)
  • "Oh Jove, in pity teach me which to choose" (Act 1, Semele)
  • "The morning lark to mine accords his note" (Act 1, Semele)
  • "Hence, hence, Iris hence away!" (Act 2, Juno)
  • "Endless pleasure, endless love" (Act 1, Semele)
  • "Oh sleep, why dost thou leave me?" (Act 2, Semele)
  • "I must with speed amuse her" (Act2, Jupiter)
  • "Where'er you walk" (Act 2, Jupiter)
  • "Leave me, loathsome light" (Act 3, Somnus)
  • "More sweet is that name" (Act 3, Somnus)
  • "Myself I shall adore" (Act 3, Semele)
  • "I am ever granting, you always complain" (Act 3, Semele)
  • "No, no, I’ll take no less" (Act 3, Semele)
  • "Above measure is the pleasure" (Act 3, Juno)
  • "Despair no more shall wound me" (Act 3, Athamas)

Recordings

References

Notes
  1. ^ The New York Times, A Chinese Spin on Baroque Opera, 16 September 2009] (web-site accessed on 26 July 2010)
  2. ^ Xinhua, Myth and Fact share the same stage (accessed on 26 October 2010)
Sources
  • Amadeus Almanac, accessed 5 June 2008
  • Dean, Winton (1959), Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques, Oxford University Press
E-book

Score of Semele (ed. Friedrich Chrysander, Leipzig 1860)

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