Semele: John Eccles and William Congreve

Mayfield Chamber Opera

Semele         Evelyn Tubb
Jupiter        John Hancorn
Juno           Jane Haughton
Athamas        James Huw Jeffries
Ino            Heidi Pegler
Iris           Ruth Gomme
Cupid          Ansy Boothroyd
Somnus         Pauls Putninsh
Apollo         John Langley
Chief priest   Patrick Ardagh-Walter
Auger          John Langley

Director       Michael Fields

"First ever staged production in a professional theatre"

Eccles's Semele is a tempting glimpse of what might have been: a
dramatically mature opera in the English style from the turn of the
eighteenth century, somewhere Purcell could have gone. (It wasn't produced,
and was first performed in concert in 1964.) The music is often similar to,
and as lovely as, Locke's Psyche, with which it also shares most of a plot.


But Congreve's libretto is coherent and literate, and depends not on stage
spectacle but on the universals of human experience: sex, jealousy and
getting out of bed in the morning. Michael Fields' direction focussed on
these essentials.

Handel, of course, found Congreve's book useful for a dramma per musica of
his own when he couldn't afford scenery. Inevitably,  I was interested in
seeing what the original was like. While there are some striking
differences, Eccles's work is more straightforward, and thoroughly
enjoyable on its own terms.

This was my first visit to Spitalfields Opera, which is right inside the
old Spitalfields Market, now a (mainly daytime) leisure centre with bars,
food stalls and sports facilities. The house is a spartan looking shell,
with a flat performance area (no stage) and raked seating. The sound and
sight-lines seem pretty good.

Semele was performed without scenery except a couple of screens and some
Greek columns -- the effect was similar to a Greek amphitheatre, though I
don't know if this was deliberate.

The costumes were standard opera Grecian. (I didn't look twice at some of
the priests of Apollo who were outside before the performance, because they
looked like Buddhist monks or Hare Krishnas.) Only Apollo himself seemed a
bit naff -- his solar crown looked as if somebody had sat on it. Maybe it
was meant to look like a drunk's party hat for the boozy finale.

The lighting at times seemed confused -- Juno and Iris in particular
sometimes struck poses in near darkness -- and the colours of some of the
costumes were completely lost. For example, I didn't pick up on Iris's
rainbow veil until the final call when the lights went up.

The one point where Semele presents staging problems is, inevitably, the
big bang -- how do you put an unimaginable cosmic and sexual force on
stage? This performance had Jupiter walk on in a black cloak with
lightening on it and walk off with Semele under it. I'd have had her
disappear in total darkness between lightening flashes, because Jupiter
shouldn't appear in human form at all.

But these are small niggles. The production worked spendidly as a whole,
carried by the acting and singing.

Eccles's Semele is less self-absorbed and more straightforwardly randy than
Handel's. Evelyn Tubb made her something like a baroque Carmen, always
looking for a good time. John Hancorn's Jupiter was hansome slime, and
sounded appropriately smooth. (Hancorn's Patroclus is a very, er,
interesting 30 seconds in the video of the Kent Opera production of
Tippett's King Priam.) Jane Houghton was fierce and mean as Juno and Ruth
Gomme was a luscious airheaded Iris, an evanescent force of nature.

I was disappointed not to hear much praised Roberto Balconi as Athamas.
James Huw Jeffries turned out to have a pleasant, quite substantial and
totally unforced voice, and the wrong legs for the Grecian kilt. As cute
Cupid, Ansy Boothroyd's legs weren't an issue: she's obviously a dancer as
well as a singer.

Pauls Putninsh, originally from Latvia and still not quite in command of
some English vowels, was amusingly heavy as Somnus. (Handel's) "Leave me
hateful light" is one of my favourite arias -- you can play it at my
memorial service to remember what I was like in the mornings -- and
Eccles's setting is strikingly similar, allowing the usual joke of Juno and
Iris dozing off instead of waking him.

There's one more performance of Semele at Spitalfields Opera, on Thursday
at 7:30. See it if you're in London -- you should even get Roberto Balconi.

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A few comments on what Handel did differently. As the programme notes, the
overall shape of Eccles' work is different: it's a through-composed drama
with few arias or set pieces, and the music focusses on characterization
and interaction, especially sexual interaction. For example, "I ever am
granting...", the scene where Semele seduces Jupiter into swearing his oath
before finding out what he's got to promise, is the musical equivalent of a
lovers' row.  Handel writes a pair of competing arias.

Handel's Semele is much more of a self-absorbed bimbo: the exstatic,
autoerotic aria "Endless pleasure", in which she celebrates becoming
Jupiter's mistress, is a genial siciliano sung by an auger in Eccles'
original. And Handel sets the transitional text "Myself I shall adore" as
an aria, presumably because it gets right to the point, and cuts most of
the rest of Semele's reflection on herself in the mirror.

Maybe the most striking instance of Handel's choice of text to set as an
aria is "I must with speed amuse her". Eccles sets this as recitative, as
the transition to Ino's visit, required to advance the plot. Handel makes
it Jupiter's big number (though he tops it a little later with "Where e'er
you walk", his own addition with text from Addison). I'd say that this is
conclusive evidence that Handel wasn't gay ;-). The aria is the anxiety
attack of a man whose mistress has just hinted she wants him to dump his
wife and marry her. The marital history of whichever George it was might be
relevant to Handel's approach, of course.