The Story ofSemele as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1744. Music by Handel, to a libretto adapted from William Congreve.
Handel composed this oratorio in a mere four weeks. Its premiere in February 1744 did not receive the vociferous enthusiasm to which he had become accustomed. Jennens (librettist for the Messiah) called Semele
"no oratorio but a bawdy opera". However, a latter-day description by the great Handel critic Winton Dean takes a different view: "Handel drew perhaps the most penetrating and explicit picture in dramatic music of a woman's insatiable sexual appetite."
Yorkshire Bach Choir Yorkshire Baroque
Soloists/Peter Seymour