page_title: Semele (Handel)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Semele (Handel) / Background
caption_attribution_description: Covent-Garden Theatre: This engraving was published as Plate 27 of Microcosm of London (1808) (see File:Microcosm of London Plate 027 - Covent Garden Theatre.jpg).
context_page_description: Semele is a 'musical drama', originally presented "after the manner of an oratorio", in three parts by George Frideric Handel. Based on a pre-existent opera libretto by William Congreve, the work is an opera in all but name but was first presented in concert form at Covent Garden theatre on 10 February 1744. The story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and concerns Semele, mother of Bacchus. Handel also referred to the work as 'The Story of Semele'. The work contains the famous aria Where'er you walk.
  The work fuses elements of opera, oratorio and classical drama. Semele was presented during Lent, one of Handel's regular oratorio seasons. However it was not what London audiences were expecting of an oratorio during the solemn season of Lent. Semele has a secular text with a story involving an adulterous sexual relationship. It is distinguished from Handel's operas by the large number of polyphonic choruses. Semele was performed four times during its original run, and twice again later the same year, but those were the only performances in Handel's lifetime.
context_section_description: Handel's last Italian opera, Deidamia, was performed in 1741. After this time, he concentrated on oratorio and musical dramas with English texts. Many of these, including Semele, were premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre, beginning with Alexander's Feast in 1736 and finishing with The Triumph of Time and Truth in 1757. As a result, in the early 1740s, oratorios at the Covent Garden Theatre were George Frideric Handel's chief activity. While most works had sacred or religious texts, two stand out for being secular: Hercules and Semele.
  The libretto was written by William Congreve around 1705–6 and originally set to music in John Eccles's opera Semele. Handel's text was adapted by an unknown collaborator and he wrote the music in just over a month, from 3 June to 4 July 1743. Semele contains self-borrowings from Giulio Cesare and Fra pensieri qual pensiero (HWV 115), as well as borrowings from Alessandro Scarlatti (notably Il Pompeo), Porta, Keiser and Telemann. Noteworthy in the score are the number and quality of accompanied recitatives (a characteristic it shares with Il Pompeo), and the sheer variety of style and tempo markings (23, with nine unique in English works).
  The musical drama takes a similar shape to an opera, but Handel eyed a place for it on the Covent Garden Theatre's oratorio-centered Lenten season of public concerts the following February (1744). So he fashioned Semele for presentation in the manner of an oratorio — a wolf in sheep's clothing to those not already enlightened to Ovid's Metamorphoses. His ploy to bring a powerful story to the theatre met, perhaps predictably, with mixed reactions. Mrs Delany called it a 'delightful piece of music', but commented, 'Semele has a strong party against it, viz. the fine ladies, petit maitres, and ignoramuses. All the opera people are enraged at Handel.' This probably related to the supporters of the rival Middlesex Opera Company, for whom Handel would not write. Harsh criticism is also known from Messiah-librettist Charles Jennens who recorded it was 'a baudy Opera'.
  The questionable morals of whether Semele was 'profane' and so perhaps not suitable for decent members of the audience meant that the work quickly fell from the repertoire, only being revived once by Handel.
  
  However, Semele remains a work of high quality. As the late Lord Harewood put it: 
  the music of Semele is so full of variety, the recitative so expressive, the orchestration so inventive, the characterization so apt, the general level of invention so high, the action so full of credible situation and incident – in a word, the piece as a whole is so suited to the operatic stage – that one can only suppose its neglect to have been due to an act of abnegation on the part of opera companies.
caption: Interior, 
  Theatre Royal Covent Garden where Semele was first performed
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