Bath Opera – Handel's Semele: 15 - 17.02.2024

Like 'The Messiah'? You will love Semele!

Nine glorious choruses enhance the story of Jupiter taking the mortal Princess Semele to be his mistress. It does not end well...or does it?!

Bath Opera's fully staged production of Handel's Semele will be set five minutes from now, in a world adjacent to our own. The drab reality of the populace is enlivened by the new Gods of the internet. Their grey lives are brightened by living vicariously through following or worshipping the ‘influencers’, instagrammers and social media stars such as Jupiter and Juno.  

Semele will be swept off, less to a mountain top, and instead to a luxury spa and retreat by her paramour. Her ultimate destruction, however, the culmination of the jealous machinations of Juno, does in the end prove a blessing in disguise for everyone else, as her sad demise does lead to the creation of Bacchus, the new ‘God’ of wine and the chorus end by celebrating their new form of relief and escape – inordinate intoxication!