The English Concert

There’s loving someone who’s out of your league – and then there’s the princess Semele, who’s got her eye on the King of the Gods himself. It can’t end well…

‘Endless pleasure, endless love…’ Handel never wrote anything more sensuous than Semele, and he tells the story of the titular princess in music of quite irresistible theatricality and colour.

It’s a deliciously transgressive evening of music theatre – and Handel’s contemporaries couldn’t work out whether it was an opera or an oratorio. The concert hall is its natural habitat, and vocalists of the quality of Brenda Rae, Elizabeth De Shong and Ailish Tynan are exactly what it demands. The English Concert’s spirited Handel performances have never failed to light up the Barbican: and this might be their most delicious treat yet.