The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (7 page)

Serse, the flamboyant and tyrannical King of Persia, loves Romilda, daughter of Ariodate, commander of the Persian army.
Serse asks his brother Arsamene to inform Romilda of his infatuation, but Arsamene is in love with Romilda himself and refuses to help.
The situation is complicated by
Romilda’s sister Atalanta, who is in love with Arsamene.
Atalanta resolves to clear the field by encouraging Arsamene’s suit, but Serse banishes him.

A foreign princess, Amastre, is betrothed to Serse.
Unable to bear separation from him, she disguises herself as a soldier and fights in Ariodate’s army.
When she discovers Serse’s passion for Romilda, she, too, vows revenge.

Atalanta schemes to persuade Romilda that Arsamene is unfaithful, but Romilda remains steadfast.
Serse inspects a new bridge across the Hellespont which will allow him to invade Europe, but its collapse in a violent storm humiliates him.
He persuades Romilda’s father Ariodate to agree that she should be married to a royal prince and orders Arsamene’s execution.
Arsamene believes Romilda to have betrayed him, but Ariodate, misreading the identity of the ‘royal prince’, marries Romilda to Arsamene.
Serse is furious when he discovers this, but when Amastre steps forward and reveals herself, he has no alternative but to marry her instead.

What to listen for

This is one of Handel’s most concise operas, marking a move away from the full-scale heroic
da
capo
aria and the introduction of shorter, more simple strophic arias.
Although the score is high-spirited and inventive, it contains several ‘borrowings’, if not outright plagiarisms, from other composers – evidence that Handel’s energies were low at the time of composition.
The castrato role of Serse is sung today by mezzo-sopranos, although no modern singers can match the incredible feats of breath control that the castrati could achieve and some notes have to be eliminated in order to give an ordinary mortal the chance to inhale.
On the other hand, the role of Arsamene, originally taken by a female soprano, is now usually assigned to a counter-tenor in order to widen the spectrum of vocal colour.

Characterization in the opera is sharp, and even the scheming Atalanta is allowed a poignant aria, ‘Voi me dite’, which suggests her vulnerability.

In performance

Nicholas Hytner’s production for ENO, designed by David  Fielding, is rated as one of the great modern stagings of  Handel.
Set in an eighteenth-century pleasure garden, it suggested that the opera was a satire on sophisticated London of  the 1730s, without ever allowing the witty visual jokes and  allusions (including a hilarious miniature version of the  bridge across the Hellespont) to swamp the characters or  their emotional dilemmas.

Recordings

Video and DVD: Ann Murray (Xerxes); Charles Mackerras (cond.).
ENO production.
Universal 02792933 (video) and Arthaus Musik 076 (DVD)

Semele

Three acts. First performed London, 1744.

Libretto by William Congreve

The master of Restoration comedy William Congreve wrote the libretto in 1705 for an opera in English composed by John Eccles, but because of the sudden fashion for imported Italian opera, this version was not performed until 1972.
In 1743, however, Handel adapted Congreve’s libretto, turning it into something closer in form to the English oratorios (like
Messiah
and
Samson
) he was writing at the time than to the Italian operas of the 1720s and 1730s which had now gone out of fashion.
The first performance of
Semele
was presented in concert form, without scenery or costumes, but because it had a saucy mythological plot rather than the sacred biblical subject common to oratorio, it seems to have baffled the audience, and it is only in the last thirty ears that its charms have been widely appreciated.

Plot

Cadmus, King of Thebes prepares to marry his dazzling daughter Semele to Prince Athamas.
But Semele is hesitant, as she is secretly in love with Jupiter, king of the gods, who has visited her in mortal disguise, and it is Semele’s sister Ino who truly loves Athamas.
Semele is carried off to Olympus by Jupiter disguised as an eagle and is set up as his mistress, much to the disgust of Jupiter’s vengeful wife Juno, who enlists the help of Somnus, god of sleep.

Armed with Somnus’s magic, Juno disguises herself as Ino and presents Semele with a mirror which tricks Semele into falling in love with her own beauty.
Juno–Ino then advises Semele to have Jupiter make love to her in godlike form rather than his mortal disguise – a sight which will confer immortality on whoever witnesses it.
Semele thinks this is a fine idea, and when Jupiter returns, she rejects his amorous advances until he promises to give her whatever she demands.
He agrees, and she asks him to take her in his godlike form.
Jupiter is horrified, but she refuses to accept anything less, and Semele is duly destroyed by the burning radiance of Jupiter’s true form.
Juno is delighted.

Ino and Athamas marry with Jupiter’s blessing, and Apollo announces that Bacchus, the god of wine and pleasure, will rise from Semele’s ashes.

What to listen for

Because
Semele
owes so much to the form of the oratorio, the chorus plays a much larger role here than in any other Handel opera.
But it is Semele who dominates the show – it is a dream role for every first-rate light soprano with good looks and the ability to act flirtatious (Kathleen Battle, Valerie Masterson, Ruth Ann Swenson and Rosemary Joshua among them).
The arias become more difficult as the opera progresses, the trickiest being the ‘Mirror’ aria, ‘Myself I shall adore’: this contains sequences of rising triplets which only the most technically adept manage to execute in
perfectly even rhythm.
The final ‘No, no, I’ll take no less’ involves some fiendishly long runs, some of them lying very low in an otherwise bright and high role – sopranos often use their freedom to ornament to take the music to a more comfortable area further up the stave!

The role of Jupiter demands a tenor who can provide both an effortlessly sweet legato for ‘Where’er you walk’ and vigorous coloratura for his other arias – most singers tend to be markedly better at one or the other.
The roles of Juno and Ino are often doubled by the same mezzo-soprano: Juno’s ‘Iris, hence away’ is a show-stopper.

In performance

John Copley’s 1982 production at Covent Garden is one of many which presents this opera in lavish baroque style, with designs that echo the great murals and frescos of Tiepolo or Boucher; Robert Carsen’s 1996 production, first seen in Aix-en-Provence, treats it more as a cynical modern sex comedy, with Semele as a vain little gold-digger who gets her comeuppance at the hands of a vicious suburban housewife.

Recording

CD: Kathleen Battle (Semele); John Nelson (cond.).
DG 4357822

Christoph Willibald von Gluck

(1714–87)

Orfeo
ed
Euridice
(Orpheus and Eurydice)

Three acts. Italian version first performed Vienna, 1762.