Review: SEMELE, Royal Ballet And Opera

Forget Arcadian landscapes and Corinthian columns. Oliver Mears’s new production of Handel’s Semele remoulds Greek myth to a 20th century manor house where mortals are servants of Gods who lounge around in velvet ball gowns. Semele is a maid plucked from service by master of the house, a cigarette chomping Jupiter. A tempestuous affair buoyed by lavish hedonism ensues.

There’s an initial whiff of Carry On about its power dynamics. The chorus ebb and flow obsequiously around Jupiter, with one whose job only seems to be hand the King of the Gods his nicotine hit. Juno’s revelation of her husband’s affair is also played for laughs, and Semele’s spurned lover Athamas, counter tenor Carlo Vistoli, flaps like a flightless bird when she abandons him.

But then a palable darkness bubbles from within culminating in the graphic birth of illegitimate Bacchus, and the grisly ending – that I won’t spoil. The tonal shift might not be as seamless as Mears hopes, but there is an undeniably contemporary resonance to Jupiter’s cruelty, even if this is not the first opera to be recast in the contemporary light of toxic masculinity.

The show belongs to South African soprano Pretty Yende who serenely coils tension into every note. Even where the score lacks aural propulsion. Her velvety vocals gently melt with heart wrenching melancholy – physically she is childlike, giddy with excitement when showered in love and luxury, but broken and timid when abandoned by rakish Jupiter, a stirring Ben Bliss. His "Where’er You Walk" – the opera’s most enduring aria - is tinged with grim melancholy. Supposedly it is a popular choice for weddings. Perhaps not for much longer. 

Th enigmatic set is a character in itself – courtesy of designer Annemarie Woods. Voluminous art deco rooms conjure a dreamlike liminality, with Jupiter’s emerald green bed sheets evoking a Hitchcockian flavour of psychodrama. That’s just the upstairs. Downstairs is the God of sleep Somnus’ lair, a grotty pile of discarded cans with Brindley Sherratt’s Somnus vegetating in a bathtub like bacteria. Every appearance in Mears’s production masks a grim reality, even if the finished product doesn't always cohere.

Semele plays at the Royal Opera House until 18 July