Semele
Georg Friedrich Händel
Composer Georg Friedrich Händel. Libretto from William Congreve.
Opera after the manner of an oratorio (1743)recommended from 15 years
A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New YorkIn English language. With surtitles in German and English language. New Production.
Duration est. 3 hours 50 minutes
1. Akt est. 07:00 pm - 07:55 pm Interval est. 07:55 pm - 08:30 pm 2. Akt est. 08:30 pm - 09:20 pm Interval est. 09:20 pm - 09:50 pm 3. Akt est. 09:50 pm - 10:50 pm
She is an extra in her own life. Her life’s reality is alien to her. Semele’s father urges her to marry Athamas, and she suddenly finds herself in her own wedding ceremony, hyped up by the marriage industry into a pompous Hollywood scene. By beginning to observe herself from the outside, she creates a parallel reality as an apparent way out, which she superimposes on her life, where all her longings are satisfied – an understanding father, a loving husband, self-determination, in short: fulfilment. However, temporary and above all, not real. In the end she would have to return to her real life, where she was quickly replaced as a wife by her sister Ino, because she could not fulfil the role assigned to her here. Semele, physically present, will psychologically not find the way back to reality. Her mind will glow through. She’s moved too far from normality. The rigid expectations of her as an individual coincided too little with her own will. This basic conflict of Semele was embedded by William Congreve and George Frideric Handel from Ovid's Metamorphoses into the narrative structures common to baroque opera. Today it might also be a perspective on the constricting power of the bourgeois corset.
