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Reviewer:
David Vickers It seems an excellent idea to take extracts from different settings of the story of Semele. Marais’s tragédie lyrique Sémélé (1709) yields a picturesque march played by two stratospheric piccolos, a warmly lyrical ouverture and a charming chaconne (propelled by colourful interludes for oboes, bassoon and flutes); a lovely brief arietta ‘Quel bruit nouveau’ has emotively dissonant suspensions for flutes and violins, and is sung poignantly by Chantal Santon Jeffery. The libretto by Antonie Houdar de La Motte also provided inspiration a decade later for a cantata by his cousin and former musketeer André Cardinal Destouches; it’s never been recorded before, so the lack of an English translation of the text is short-sighted, but Mélodie Ruvio narrates Semele’s death with dignity and finesse.
I’m baffled by the ensuing Handelian hotchpotch. There are only three clichéd choices from Semele. To flesh things out, Les Ombres chuck in the concerto Op 3 No 4, a short instrumental extract from Penseroso’s long aria ‘Sweet bird’ and, most puzzlingly, the sublime religiosity of Didymus and Theodora’s profound duet ‘To thee, thou glorious son of worth’. Cardinal Pamphilij’s poem for the Roman cantata Tra le fiamme (1707/08) compares a risky amorous infatuation with a moth being drawn to the flame (and also alludes to Icarus flying too close to the sun), so one might argue it has a loose literary parallel with Ovid’s cautionary tale about the ambitious Semele being burnt to cinders by her insistence on seeing Jupiter in his true form. The over-spiced interpretation by all participants isn’t exactly an endless pleasure and Jeffery’s intrusive embellishments are unconvincing – for example, completing a rushed account of the first aria by whizzing up the octave. |
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