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.
Flames are pretty much everywhere in Mears’ occasionally fussy staging, from the post-coital cigarettes to the toasty fire and ominous chimney that dominate Jupiter’s love nest. Annemarie Woods’ chic sets and costumes place us in the here and now – the royal residence might be a luxe Parisian hotel – while Fabiana Piccioli’s lighting turns from playful to horrifying at the flick of a switch. The direction has its inconsistencies, and whether Mears earns the horror of his final 15 minutes given the lighter tone adopted for much of the preceding two hours is questionable, but there’s no denying the effectiveness of the denouement.
Christian Curnyn leads a respectable account of the score, though the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House is occasionally too loud for the lighter voices and several singers could benefit from crisper diction. Curiously, the chorus sounds better offstage than on.
With her filigree upper register, Pretty Yende is vocally appealing in the title role, making relatively light work of Myself I shall adore. She’s spirited too, though the character is sometimes sketchily defined. Ben Bliss is a smooth, articulate Jupiter, dazzling in coloratura passages and elegant in Where’er you walk. Carlo Vistoli makes for a fruity, frenetic Athamas, with Niamh O’Sullivan an intense, velvet-voiced Ino and Marianna Hovanisyan a sweet-toned Iris. Brindley Sherratt does sterling duty as Semele’s run-ragged father and the shabby God of Sleep, but it’s Alice Coote’s deliciously spiteful, yet ultimately abject Juno that gets to the emotional heart of Mears’ bleak reimagining.
• At Royal Opera House, London, until 18 July.
