Handel’s Semele is a curious beast. It’s both an opera masquerading in oratorio’s clothing, and a moralising object lesson in knowing your place. “Nature to each allots its proper sphere,” sings the chorus as the overly ambitious heroine goes up in smoke, charred to a crisp by the divine brilliance of her adulterous lover. It’s a point hammered home in Oliver Mears’ astute new production where the hapless Semele is a go-getting servant trapped in a palace with a slippery cad, his vengeful spouse and their glassy-eyed children.
If you take William Congreve’s libretto at face value, Semele – the daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes – is a vain fly-by-night, easy prey for the jealous Juno who eggs her on to insist that her mighty paramour appears in all his flesh-consuming majesty rather than human form. Mears takes a more interesting approach, seeing in Semele a tenacious contender who honestly believes that Jupiter intends to make her his life partner. It’s clear, however, from the bookended byplay in the overture and finale that she is merely the latest in a long line of discarded women to be consumed in the royal incinerator. A cupboardful of urns, labelled Calisto, Io, Leda etc is a suitably chilling touch.
