What a delight John la BouchardiËre's revival of Robert Carsen's original 1999 production of Handel's Semele is. This is fair and square in the tradition established by the company's much earlier Julius Caesar and Xerxes, and I hope it will find its way onto celluloid before they are done with it.
      The production is full of wit and almost sleight-of-hand visual 'one-liners'. When Semele's affair with Jove hits the press such headlines as "By Jove", "Semele in Heaven" and "Where Eagles Dare" just flash before the audience with insouciant abandon.
      This same wit informs the characterisation which is at its most arch with Patricia Bardon's portrayal of Juno who is an undisguised representation of Queen Elizabeth complete wish sash, wrist-twisting wave and grand hauteur. Her autocratic outrage is wonderfully off-set by her over-ardent secretary Iris caught to a tee with every sound, gesture and movement by Janis Kelly. These two performances would be a pity to lose without some record.
      Some of the most beautiful music in Handel's secular oratorio (posing the question of whether it should be staged or not) is given to Somnus, whose "Leave me loathsome light" at the beginning of the third act with its quietly descending suspensions is
      Handel at his most poetic. This was sensitively sung by the promising Paul Reeves standing in for the indisposed Graeme Danby on the night I saw the production. Handel is at his most dramatically telling in the scenes and arias which require the portrayal of real emotions. The situations in which these have to be placed may be formulaic, even repetitive and sometimes hard to follow or believe, but once the nutshell has been removed the nut itself is rich and fruitful. This is very much the case with Semele. Semele's approaching wedding to the innocuous Boeotian prince, Athamas, is just a foil to establish Semele's reluctance and her secret, forbidden love of Jupiter. Robin Blaze's is appropriately anaemic as Athamas and vocally pale in comparison to the fuller sounds of Ian Bostridge's Jupiter and Carolyn Sampson's Semele. So despite Semele's melancholy air "Oh Jove! in pity teach me which to chose", with its anguised opening rise of a minor ninth, the drama does not really get going till Jupiter descends claps of thunder, extinguishes the nuptial fires on Juno's family-values alter, throws Athamas into Ino's arms (Ino who is secretly but genuinely in love with the hapless castrato) and carries off Semele to his Olympian eyrie.
      Up on Mount Olympus its sex, sex, sex all the way. As Semele says "Endless pleasure, endless love / Semele enjoys above. / On her bosom Jove reclining, / Useless now his thunder lies; / To her arms his bolts resigning, / And his lightning to her eyes." Handel sets these words to a beguiling Gavotte with Semele holding a conversation with the echoing violins and with a seven-bar melisma on 'pleasure'. Who could fail to be convinced Semele has found true love and made the right decision, or had it made for her by the philandering Jove. But both in Ovid as on the eighteenth-century stage the recreation of ancient myths was not to upset conventional morality. Semele is flirting with forbidden love and in the process made enemies in high places with considerably longer planning and more power than she. Enter Juno the repeatedly wronged wife who knows just how to see off what she considers the latest hussy. Semele's ingenuesimplicity and beguiling charm, as portrayed to perfection both vocally and dramatically by Carolyn Sampson, is vividly contrasted with Patricia Bardon's commanding Juno with her energetic recitativo accompagnato "Awake Saturnia" and its succeeding spiky F minor aria "Hence, hence, Iris hence away." Bardon simultaneously invests her charaterisation with all the venom of Fricka and Cruella Deville (from 101 Dalmations) to the caricature of one of Bertie Wooster's lorgnette-glaring aunts.
      At the heart of this oratorio is ill-starred love-affair between Semele and Jupiter. Semele thinks this is for good and she has won the lottery. Jove, of course, loves for the while, but knows that the affair rests on sand not rock. He knows, she does not. And it is her ignorance that is played upon by Juno who brings about her rival's downfall by recommending to her a 'wish that ought not to be wished'. She must see Jupiter, as he really is; and as every mythologists know the gods cannot be revealed this side of eternity. Ovid finds a metamorphic solution, but in most cases such hubris is punished, like Icarus, with a fatal downfall. But before this Jupiter and Semele deepen their love in a giant stage-centre bed.
      Ian Bostridge is masterful as Jupiter, his dÈbut in this role at ENO. Far from portraying the philandering thunderer, Bostridge waif-life Jupiter suggests something much tenderer and more loving. Perhaps, Semele might have been Miss Right, but all the laws of heaven represented in the formidable morality of Juno forbid it. This vulnerability makes Bostridge's heart-stopping performance of "Where'er you walk" all the more poignant. Visually this is set up as a purple passage with the lights down and the stars out. But what compels is Bostridge's way of articulating and sometimes almost whispering the words as well beautifully shaping the phrases. His is a must-see and hear performance of Jupiter and lifts the plot's conceit to another psychological plane.
      The music for the most part is well directed by Laurence Cummings, who shows much sensitivity and nuance despite some lapses in ensemble between the stage and pit. Throughout also the chorus is well drilled and articulate, making a very telling contribution to this elegant and moving re-telling of Semele's downfall.
Roderick Swanston