Semele by Handel

Nearly 25 years after Semele became the very first opera Pinchgut presented at City Recital Hall, its return celebrates the company’s evolution and the ambition that continues to drive it forward.

Celebrated Australian director Neil Armfield, whose visionary productions of Platée (2021) and Julius Caesar (2024) were hailed as landmark achievements, now brings his theatrical flair to this mythic and deeply human story. A mortal woman becomes the lover of Jupiter, king of the gods, and — longing for immortality — demands to see him in his true, divine form. Her choice seals her fate when Jupiter’s jealous wife, Juno, intervenes.

A powerhouse cast brings Handel’s characters vividly to life. Beloved Pinchgut artists Alexandra Oomens and Catherine Carby return, joined by British tenor David Webb and countertenor Austin Haynes in their Pinchgut debuts. Together with the emotional force of Cantillation chorus and the Orchestra of the Antipodes, they create a performance of grandeur, intimacy, and colour.

Handel’s score brims with rapture, wit, and aching beauty, charting a journey from ecstasy to ruin. In Semele, desire and destruction have never sounded so thrilling.