Myths and morals

Handel’s Semele, one of the most enjoyable operas (or opera-oratorio, if you insist) in the repertoire, is, in its upshot, an enchanting display of thoughtless hedonism and a warning about what may happen, or even what is bound to happen, if you take hedonism too far. Wormsley, to which Garsington Opera moved several years ago — this was my first visit — seems the ideal place to stage it. The opening of the season was a perfect early-summer evening, the countryside looking gorgeous, refreshments and supper delicious and prompt, the atmosphere friendly, and the performance in many ways excellent. Who could have left it without thinking how marvellous it had almost all been, but how unwise it would be to expect most of life to give such pleasure, or indeed to think that it would be a good idea if it did?

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

Almost everyone, I suspect. For Semele, its text derived from Congreve, with Pope responsible for ‘Where’er you walk’, is mythology with a stern admixture of morality, though in terms of musical content hedonism is the obvious winner. Certainly, the melodies one comes away from it humming are Jupiter’s seductive one and Semele’s heedless ‘Endless pleasure, endless love’ and ‘Myself I shall adore, if I persist in gazing’. It is as amusing as Offenbach’s mythological send-ups, but its targets are almost always us. So the production needs to steer a delicate course between diverting us and making us think, even if not very hard. Anniliese Miskimmon’s wasn’t, in that way, or in several others, a complete success, though it was almost always entertaining. Together with the designer Nicky Shaw she concocted a time- and space-travelling affair that was sometimes witty, sometimes serviceable, sometimes tiresome. The opening, with Semele resisting marriage to Athamas, was distinctly low church, a sparse congregation bewildered by the bride-in-white’s fleeing the altar.