Semele

Semele is engaged, but secretly in love with someone else. Her lover is none other than Jupiter, King of the Gods. When he carries her off his wife Juno devises a scheme that will ensure a swift and brutal end – both to her husband’s infidelity and to Semele herself.

With a plot full of lusty Gods and beautiful mortals, where intrigue and desire take centre-stage, Handel’s Semele combines the drama of Italian opera with the choral splendour and richness of English oratorio. Ovid’s colourful Metamorphoses provides the starting point for a work that scandalised 18th-century audiences, a story of transformations, seductions and illusions that drew new sensuality and ecstasy from the composer.

Olivier Award-winning director Adele Thomas makes her Glyndebourne debut with the festival’s first-ever staging of Semele. Period specialist Václav Luks conducts an exciting young cast.

A new production for Festival 2023. Sung in English with supertitles.

Creative team

Conductor
Václav Luks

Director
Adele Thomas

Set Designer
Annemarie Woods

Costume Designer
Hannah Clark

Choreographer
Emma Woods

Lighting Designer
Peter Mumford

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

The Glyndebourne Chorus
Chorus Director
Aidan Oliver

Cast includes

Semele
Joélle Harvey 

Juno
Jennifer Johnston

Jupiter
Stuart Jackson

Iris
Samuel Mariño

Ino
Stephanie Wake-Edwards

Athamas
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen

Somnus/Cadmus
Clive Bayley