Organization

Stage director

James Hurley

Set designer

Rachel Szmukler

Costume designer

Choreographer

Matthew Eberhardt

Lighting designer

Ben Pickersgill

Conductor

Oliver John Ruthven

Repetiteur

Jung Eun Lee

Singer

Soprano

Elaine Tate

Semele

Robyn Allegra Parton

Bass

Dominic Kraemer

Cadmus

Samuel Pantcheff

Contralto

John Lattimore

Athamas

Tom Verney

Mezzo-soprano

Melanie Sanders

Catherine Backhouse

Tenor

Edmund Hastings

Jupiter

Zachary Devin

Kathryn Walker

Juno

Katie Grosset

Daisy Brown

Iris

Jennifer Clark

Andrew Tipple

Somnus

Bartholomew Lawrence

Hugh Benson

Apollo

Ed Bonner

Martin Musgrave

High Priest

Orchestra

Musica Poetica London

London

United Kingdom

Highgate

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Semele Händel

Public

Private

Approved

SEMELE
Music by George Frederic Handel (1685 - 1759)
Libretto by William Congreve (1670 - 1729)
The legend of Semele was common currency in ancient times, as part of the
cult of Dionysus (Bacchus) which permeated the eastern Mediterranean.
Semele (a mortal- probably a Thracian or Phrygian name) was the motner
of Dionysus through her ill-fated liaison with Zeus (Jupiter), A common
version of the story is that the jealous Hera (Juno) tricked the pregnant
Semele into demanding to see Zeus in all his panoply. Semele failed to
realise that you could not look on Zeus and live, and paid the inevitable
price. Zeus rescued the foetus from the ashes and implanted it into his
thigh, whence, at full term, the future Dionysus was born.
The story was told in both Greek and Roman literature (a lost play by
Aeschylus and Ovid's "Metamorphoses or Transtormations"). In 1/04,
the English dramatist William Congreve, perhaps looking ror a Subject
uit itable for a satire on the King and his mistresses -who were tair game
at the time - used it as the basis of a libretto for an opera to be written
by John Eccles. Eccles failed to deliver the score on time, and it was
not until 1743 that it re-surfaced as the text (with additions from the
pastoral poems of Alexander Pope, including the hit song "Where'er you
walk') for an "oratorio' by Handel.
In the 17/30s, Handel, realising that the demand for Italian 'opera seria
was drying up, rekindled his fans appetite with oratorios-dramatiC but
unstaged narratives of biblical stories such as Samson andsolomo
which could be performed during Lent. Within these great works, there
IS orten the germ or an opera, as recent productions or heodora and
even 'Messiah' have demonstrated. But 'Semele, one or the twO new
works Handel produced for the 1744 season, was not simply after the
manner of an oratorio', as described in the London Daily Postt was
a full-blooded opera in disguise -and a "bawdy one at that, as Charnes
Jennens, the librettist for Messiah, was quick to notice. herearter t
was not until 1959, 200 years after Handel's death, that "semele was
given a professional performance on the London stage, and began to
achieve recognition as an operatic masterpieCe.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble