“Semele” by George Frideric Handel at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London: Arts Intel Report

“Myself I shall adore if I persist in gazing,” the giddy heroine sings, mirror in hand, on her way to big trouble in Semele, arguably Handel’s most bewitching dramatic score. (Opera? Oratorio? Don’t even go there.) The Theban princess Semele is carrying on with Jupiter, you see, and Juno is far from acquiescent. Other highlights include Semele’s dreamy “Oh Sleep, why dost that leave me,” Jupiter’s hymnic “Where’er you walk,” and the spiteful Juno’s cackling “Beyond measure is the pleasure which my revenge supplies.” But really, the hits just keep on coming. In this Covent Garden revival, Pretty Yende holds court as Semele, joined by Ben Bliss and Alice Coote as the Olympian couple whose marriage the upstart human is disrupting. The Baroque specialist Christian Curnyn conducts. —Matthew Gurewitsch