Semele, Glyndebourne Festival Opera review ★★★★★

• Who can blame ambitious Semele for wanting to get out of Dullsville (Thebes), with its grey sky and sludge-green daywear? And when an affair –and a son – with the king of the gods is on offer, the temptation is too strong to resist.

Of course it doesn’t end well. Semele, babe, we could have told you! But did we foresee the exceptionally nasty ending that director Adele Thomas devises in her new production of Handel’s Semele at Glyndebourne Festival Opera? We did not. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Semele is literally consumed by fire having sex with Jove. She dies, you could say, happy; but not tortured and terrified.

Thomas brings a dour realism to an ancient fable, with mixed results, but with the benefit of outstanding musicianship from soloists, chorus and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Václav Luks.

Joélle Harvey as Semele and Stuart Jackson as Jove. © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

American soprano Joélle Harvey in the title role is as vivacious on stage as she is of voice, the bright star in her cult-like village. Her sister, Ino, is sung by the wonderfully rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards, a recent Royal Opera House Jette Parker artist, and sympathetic presence.

Venezuelan male soprano Samuel Mariño is god's messenger Iris, although lovelier in the high male register is counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Athamas, dropped by Semele but loved by Ino.

Dwarfing his little mortal lover, tenor Stuart Jackson’s at times surprisingly tender Jove has his own code of honour. Semele’s plea for immortality leaves him no choice. She must see him as he really is, not disguised as a man, and the dazzling revelation will kill her. In Civvy Street he dazzles all the same in a generously built chartreuse suit. Suits, nightie-dresses and separates are the rig of the day in this loosely but visually dull modern-dress production, costume designer Hannah Clark.

Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and Joélle Harvey (Semele). © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Visual treats are few and far between, with low lighting that unfolds on a stage within a stage, distancing the audience. When the chorus finally steps downstage at the end, it is like meeting them for the first time. Oh hello, I found myself mouthing. There’s no doubting those soaring voices, but oh dear, the sea of sludge and black. No wonder Semele fled.

Handel’s music is partly recycled and the piece is technically an oratorio, and therefore sung, not staged, rather than an opera, with all the trimmings. That gives Thomas a blank canvas with highly coloured songs, including standalone favourites 'Where'er you walk', 'Myself I shall adore' and the soporific sleep aria by Somnus (Clive Bayley).

Disappointing, then, that Annemarie Woods’s paradise gardens look like No-Mow May, with a few grasses that surely prickle at passion o'clock. And Jove's return to deity is more Freddie Mercury that meteoric.

Samuel Mariño as Iris. © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Glyndebourne's vocally superb chorus is underused physically, given a few jazz hands and little else to do but huddle together.

But Handel’s music rises above all this. Luks is an early music specialist who injects immediacy into this great 18th-century score, and the OAE play virtuosically and impeccably, as always.

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Semele is sung in English with English surtitles. Further performances are on 26, 28 July; 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 16, 19, 21, 24, 26 Aug. Click here for tickets and returns