Semele

Reviews in the Times and Guardian

gorgeous to look at and listen to, it is also rather shallow, a romp rather than a morality tale...Carolyn Sampson sings Semele with beguiling facility, style and beauty, adding her own roulades to Handel’s already extreme demands, pinpointing every note of the coloratura and doing it all with liquefying sexiness...This is a great performance... Ian Bostridge’s Jupiter gradually unbends to deliver the sweetest soft legato, Patricia Bardon’s Juno is hilariously fiery as the (literally) queenly betrayed wife, and Janis Kelly camps Iris up something terrible.

After a languid start, Laurence Cummings, conducting, brings real Handelian sensibility and drama to the orchestra, and the chorus has a fine time undressing, drinking and indulging in some of Handel’s loveliest music.

The revival is also hampered by the miscasting of Ian Bostridge as Jupiter - a cleanly sung performance, but too anodyne to be engaging. Bardon is fabulous, all fire-breathing coloratura and fury, while Carolyn Sampson's Semele is by turns languidly erotic and petulantly manipulative. Laurence Cummings's conducting and the orchestral playing are both immaculate.

I'm going tonight, mainly for Carolyn Sampson. I shall, of course, blog it.