Handel’s Semele is one of those works that refuses to sit neatly in a box. First staged at Covent Garden in 1744, it was billed as a “new oratorio” to slip past London’s strict Lenten ban on opera.

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Even in 1744 Handel's Semele left its audience nonplussed. The premiere was given in concert during Lent but ...

Cadmus prepares for the marriage of his daughter Semele to Athamas but she has been inventing any possible obstacle to the arrangement, as she is in love with the god Jupiter. Semele’s sister, Ino, ...

Leonardo García Alarcón cuts Semele copiously yet reinstates two numbers that Handel rejected and never performed. Part 1 is given complete (paradoxically, where Gardiner’s recent live Alexandra ...

Semele is playing at the Royal Opera House on various dates until 18 July. Beautiful music, glorious singing and a doubtful production combine to create mixed feelings about Handel's Semele at the ...