BBC Music review of Semele
News and Reviews
Review of Eccles's Semele
01 March 2021
RECORDING OF THE MONTH
A lost masterpiece of English opera revived
Julian Perkins and Cambridge Early Opera dust off John Eccles’s 1706 Semele – and it’s a scintillating triumph, says Berta Joncus
Eccles' Semele
Anna Dennis (soprano)
Richard Burkhard (baritone)
Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)
Héloïse Bernard (soprano)
Graeme Broadbent (bass)
Cambridge Early Opera
Academy of Ancient Music
Julian Perkins
AAM AAM012 121:27 mins (2 discs)
John Eccles’s sexy, sparkling opera bursts to life – finally! Shelved in 1706, Semele has never been professionally recorded, so this production was worth waiting for. Cast, band, director and sound are all top-notch, restoring Eccles’s score to its full glory.
The project grew out of Julian Perkins’s November 2019 Cambridge Handel Opera Company concert performance, with rising-star soloists singing alongside the more seasoned professional names. It’s astonishing that Eccles’s Semele is obscure: the libretto, by William Congreve, is as yummy as Eccles’s music. Adapting Ovid, Congreve has Semele joyously join Jupiter in illicit love, escaping thereby an unwanted earthly match. Jupiter’s enraged wife Juno, in the guise of Semele’s sister, goads Semele to trap Jupiter into granting her wish that he show himself to her as a god, which kills her.
Thanks to Perkins’s deft casting, each principal’s vocalism and dramatis persona are wonderfully matched. As Semele, Anna Dennis is at first seductive in her delicacy, then frightening in her steely-toned ambition. Dark-timbred mezzo soprano Helen Charlston’s Juno flares magnificently, unafraid to sound ugly when furious. Baritone Richard Burkhard captures Congreve’s sensual yet
thoughtful Jupiter, texturing every word. The show-stealer is soprano Héloïse Bernard who, as Juno’s servant Iris, forges riveting moments from modest material, such as ‘Thither Flora the Fair’. In this brief chaconne, Bernard drapes each stanza in increasingly gorgeous embellishments, dropping dramatically into chest register for her last verse.
The Academy of Ancient Music’s playing is just as fascinating. Perkins directs from the harpsichord with a demonic intensity. When individual band members take over the storytelling, their solos gild Eccles’s invention with their own. Lost instrumental numbers – symphonies, dances, ritornellos – known on the page only from stage directions, are here taken from other Eccles compositions. They give the AAM further opportunity to strut, from the regal Overture (from his Rinaldo and Armida), to the sparkling ‘Dance of the Zephyrs’ (from his Aires).
Helen Charlston's Juno flares magnificently, unafraid to sound ugly when furious
Eccles’s solo and instrumental writing are both exquisite, but he experiments most boldly in his vocal ensembles. In these, catchy tunes and rhythms belie the sophistication of counterpoint and motivic networking as entwined solo voices typically yield to regal choruses or symphonies.
Perkins commands a gamut of responses to the ensembles’ charms, from crystal-clear voicing to big, fat homophonic swells. The Act I quartet ‘Why dost thou thus untimely grieve?’, in which four characters each express a different foreboding, captures both Eccles’s originality and the performers’ brilliance: after introducing the common theme, the soloists, taking their cue from Perkins’s keyboard playing, gently decelerate their points of imitation to bring the quartet to a brooding close.
With early career vocalists among the cast, there are minor imperfections, but this is a superb reconstruction of a lost Eccles masterpiece.
PERFORMANCE
★★★★★
RECORDING
★★★★★
An interview with Julian Perkins
Why has Eccles’s version of this story been so neglected?
When people think of Semele, they inevitably think of Handel’s version. When Handel came to England he conquered everything before him. With this opera by Eccles, it’s an intriguing ‘what if?’ in musical history; what would have happened had Handel not come to England?
How different are Handel and Eccles’s versions?
This is a very different work to Handel’s. In Handel’s version the character of Semele comes across as a sort of voluptuous sex-kitten; it’s so exuberant, with its wonderfully florid, excessive vocal runs. Eccles captures a much darker, more brooding Semele; and it’s probably worth remembering William Congreve worked with Eccles on this libretto, so there was a synergy between composer and librettist. Handel’s is based on Congreve, but the composer adapted it, plus there’s text by Pope and others in there.
Also, Eccles’s recitatives are so detailed, which comes from a more Monteverdi style of recitative writing. Handel’s was more of a broad brush.
Were you surprised by what you discovered in Eccles’s work?
I was struck by Eccles’s uncanny ability to differentiate his writing for all the different singers – there are 15 different roles. So it made casting a wonderful challenge. It’s always going to be compared to Handel’s masterpiece, but I think what also surprised me was the fact that it’s such a direct but concise work, but very nuanced at the same time. For an opera, a lot of drama is packed into a relatively short amount of time.
Cambridge Independent review of Semele
News and Reviews
Review of Eccles's Semele
29 November 2019
‘…So this was something of an event and, as it turned out, an event outstanding in every conceivable way.
First of all, Eccles’s Semele is a work of great beauty and intelligence so that one found oneself constantly asking (rather as with Handel’s Brockes Passion) how it had managed to fall through the net for so long.
Julian Perkins, Artistic Director of CHOC, conducted the orchestra from the harpsichord, and the orchestra was joined by a uniformly excellent cast of singers who presented the opera, a work at once tragic, comic and satirical with each of these elements in performance emerging in exactly the right proportions.
Myths were the vehicles by which men originally represented archetypal situations, and stories describing relationships between mankind and its gods seem to have been ways of acknowledging the twofold nature of man.
Semele loves Jupiter, a god. Jupiter establishes her in a palace for love-making; another example would be the palace the god Cupid makes for his mortal love, Psyche.
An undertone of sexuality pervades Congreve’s libretto (the same one used by Handel), accentuated by Héloïse Bernard’s (Iris) emphasis on ‘erected’ (‘Behold a new-erected Palace rise’) and Cupid’s description of the post-coital Semele.
Here it’s worth adding that Mezzo-Soprano, Bethany Horak-Hallett’s (Cupid) delivery of her only four lines in the opera revealed such a beautiful voice as to be typical of how the briefest as well as the lengthiest casting roles were all of a piece in the consistency of the production’s excellence.
The voice of Mezzo-Soprano Helen Charlston (Juno) hit astonishing heights in passages such as ‘Somnus, arise’ and ‘above measure is the pleasure’, while Soprano Anna Dennis leant appropriate drama to the role of Semele, especially in the petulance of her sequence demanding immortality from Jupiter.
Semele (‘Aiming at immortality with dangerous ambition’) reveals all the faults and foibles which would have rung alarm bells in the early eighteenth century. Pope argued that Man should be content with his station. (’Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a fly’). Pride, hubris, was the cardinal sin, and Semele is lured into committing it by the vengeful Juno (Myself I shall adore, / If I persist in gazing; / No object sure before / Was ever half so pleasing’).
Art was required to be moral (‘Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit, / And heals with morals what it hurts with wit’) so the joyful proclamation by Apollo of the age of Bacchus (child of Jupiter and the now defunct Semele) is to be taken with a pinch of salt perhaps ( ‘. . when Bacchus is born, Love’s Reign’s at an end’). As is known, wine enhancing desire, takes away the performance.
The outstanding range of superb voices and an orchestra of flawless period authenticity made it a privilege for the audience to be present at this masterful production. This is the one which will no doubt ensure that John Eccles’s Semele goes on to enjoy a reputation it so much deserves.’
Opera Magazine review of Semele
News and Reviews
Review of Eccles's Semele
29 November 2019
The Academy of Ancient Music did full justice to the score, under the direction of Julian Perkins on the harpsichord, with Peter Holman playing the harpsichord continuo. Virtuoso wielding of the thunder sheet by Elaine So provided essential punctuation to Semele’s rise and fall.
All the vocal soloists were excellent. Anna Dennis sang Semele with her pure, powerful soprano and was a commanding stage presence. She has the ability to take rather ordinary notes and give them point and meaning. The mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston did full justice to the role of the furious Juno, full of spiteful passion, her coloratura passages proving her to be the real prima donna here.
The baritone Richard Burkhard was a convincing Jupiter, smooth and resonant. Semele’s abandoned swain Athamas was sung by William Wallace in a pleasing tenor and the infatuated Ino by Aoife Miskelly, employing light operatic vibrato in an affecting ‘You’ve undone me’. Héloïse Bernard’s light, sweet soprano made her a beguiling Iris with real personality. Cupid suffered the loss of an aria but Bethany Horak-Hallett’s rich soprano shone. The tenor Rory Carver projected well as the Second Priest/First Augur and the remaining low voices – including Christopher Foster as Somnus, Jonathan Brown as Cadmus and Graeme Broadbent as the Chief Priest – carried off their roles with conviction. As Apollo announcing the birth of Bacchus, the baritone Jolyon Loy was a suave, commanding and suitably joyful presence.