- 1 For various reasons (see n. 21), the work by Congreve and Eccles, intended for the new Queen’s Thea (...)
- 2 See Winton Dean, “Charles Jennens’s Marginalia to Mainwaring’s Life of Handel”, Music and Letters, (...)
- 3 Mary Delany, Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: with Interesting Remi (...)
1Among the works of Handel’s maturity, Semele stands out as an anomaly. Given at Covent Garden in February 1744, the piece was first performed in an unstaged version, “in the Manner of an Oratorio”, even though in terms of form and subject matter it is undeniably a fully-fledged opera. The libretto, initially written by William Congreve in 1707 for the composer John Eccles, bears all the characteristics of a work meant to be played onstage.1 The relative failure of this unique composition – it is one of a small number of dramatic works never to have been performed again in Handel’s lifetime – can no doubt be explained by its incompatibility with contemporary audience expectations. Obviously, the performance of an openly erotic work during Lent did not go down well with the more middle-class, puritanical public of the 1740s, not to mention the literary origins of a story based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book iii, ii.251–313). The sexual imagery of the libretto did actually put off the English oratorio-going public of the 1740s, more concerned with moral edification than with the type of sexual titillation that characterises a libretto initially written by a master of the Restoration: “No Oratorio, but a baudy opera”, was the irrevocable comment made by Charles Jennens, the librettist of Handel’s Messiah.2 Another reason for the relatively cold reception of the work may also have stemmed from the fact that Handel, withdrawn from the world of opera, had recently refused Lord Middlesex’s offer to compose an opera in Italian for the company he had founded in 1739. The performance of Semele, a disguised opera sung in English, may well have offended the English aristocracy for whom the work thus amounted to an additional affront. Certainly this is what comes across in the correspondence of Mrs Delany, one of Handel’s faithful friends and an indefatigable chronicler of the London musical life of the 1730s and 40s: “Semele has a strong party against it, viz. the fine ladies, petits maîtres and ignoramus’s. All the opera people are enraged at Handel.”3
2Semele’s fundamentally operatic and theatrical characteristics naturally derive from Handel’s decision to base the work on an eminently dramatic libretto penned in the early eighteenth century. Handel called on a second writer to make the changes he judged necessary for his revised version of Semele. Although the identity of this librettist is uncertain, it is generally believed that the new text was adapted by Newburgh Hamilton, a writer with whom Handel had collaborated on several previous occasions. Two of Hamilton’s outstanding works were the oratorio ode Alexander’s Feast (1736) and the oratorio Samson (1743), respectively adapted from Dryden’s eponymous poem and Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes.
3The aim of this article is to analyse and comment upon the cuts and additions made by Handel and Hamilton to Congreve’s text, especially as regards the treatment of the two bedchamber scenes that take up a considerable portion of the dramatic text. It will thus examine the sexual innuendos of the libretto, both in the initial version of 1707 and in the revised text concocted by Hamilton in the 1740s. The textual additions to the libretto do indeed endow the first bedchamber scene with an erotic dimension that is paradoxically far more conspicuous than in the original version destined for the Restoration stage. The paper will then demonstrate how the second bedchamber scene allows for the meeting of Eros and Thanatos, the fatal “bolt” delivered by Zeus being understandable in terms of sensual or sexual encounters. Finally, it will offer a comparative approach to the two musical settings of the verbal text, that of Eccles in the first decade of the eighteenth century and that of Handel in the 1740s. It will draw parallels between the textual and contextual elements of the work, the temporary demise of Italian opera in London being in a certain way also thematised in Handel and Hamilton’s reading of the work.
4Let us first briefly set out the plot of the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Semele, the daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes and of the Queen Harmonia, loves and is loved by Jupiter and is carrying the god’s child. On the advice of the jealous and infuriated Juno, who appears to Semele disguised as her old nurse, the ambitious and unwise Semele asks Jupiter to appear before her in his true form and all his glory. As Juno had hoped, the mortal Semele is burnt to ashes when Jupiter appears to her as a thunderbolt. The god tears the unborn child from his mother’s womb and stitches it inside his thigh. The child of Jupiter and Semele is the god Bacchus.
5In his preface, Congreve openly admitted he had considerably deviated from Ovid’s story:
- 4 D. F. McKenzie, ed., The Works of William Congreve, 3 vols, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, (...)
’Tis hoped, the Liberty … will be excus’d. … This Reason, it is presumed, may be allowed in a Thing intirely fictitious; and more especially being represented under the Title of an Opera, where greater Absurdities are every Day excus’d.4
6The playwright’s modifications include the addition of several minor characters (Cupid, a High Priest, and Isis), as well as other figures more closely associated with the unfolding of the plot. One of these is the god Somnus, who assists Juno in her destructive plan. Somnus’s presence also allowed Congreve to weave into his story numerous references to the themes of sleep, forgetfulness and illusion, themes that are part and parcel of the setting of the bedchamber. The narrative is further complicated by the development of the subplot centred on the couple made up of Ino and Athamas. Their sentimental difficulties – Ino is in love with Athamas, who is smitten with Semele, who in turn loves Jupiter – offer a slightly ironic counterpart to the love affair conducted by Semele and Jupiter. The tragic destiny of Ino and Athamas in the original myth is at odds with their final coming together in Congreve’s version, perhaps making it necessary to take the lieto fine, or happy ending, that closes the opera with a pinch of salt. In the Handel/Hamilton version, the relatively conventional music of the final chorus encourages us to see the work as a sort of baroque trompe l’oeil designed to mask the more serious issues at stake.
- 5 McKenzie, ed., The Works of William Congreve, vol. 2, p. 238 (“Argument introductory to the Opera o (...)
7As already mentioned, Congreve’s libretto is notable for the presence of two long bedchamber scenes that constitute the main bulk of the opera. Even though the term “bedchamber” is not explicitly mentioned, most of the action of Acts i and ii is set in Semele’s “apartment” (ii.i), or “private Abode”,5 where the heroine sleeps away her time lying “under a canopy” and waiting to be satisfied by her immortal lover. In Congreve’s original libretto, the first bedchamber actually appears in Act ii scene i (“The scene changes to an Apartment in the palace of Semele; she is sleeping; Loves and Zephyr waiting”), in which “Semele awakes, and rises”, singing about the joys of sleep:
Semele
O sleep, why dost thou leave me,
Why thy visionary joys remove?
O sleep, again deceive me,
To my arms restore my wand’ring love! (ii.ii)
8The rest of the act (scenes iii and iv) occurs in the same setting. Even though the stage directions for scene iv mention that “[t]he scene is totally changed and shows an open Country” (ii.iv), one has to be aware that the scene is actually a dumb show offered as a divertissement to the main protagonists, an entertainment functioning as a play-within-the-play and relying on the inclusion of a “setting-within-the-setting”:
The Scene is totally changed and shews an open Country. Several Shepherds and Shepherdesses Enter. Semele and Ino having entertain’d each other in dumb shew sit and observe the Rural Sports, which end the Second Act. (ii.iv)
- 6 See notably, the famous 1996 production by Robert Carsen, displaying a denuded Semele voluptuously (...)
9In Handel’s setting of the story, one can argue that the first bedchamber already begins at the end of Act i. By transferring the words sung by the Second Augur (“Endless pleasure, endless love / Semele enjoys above”) to the character of Semele, who is now enjoying in Heaven the bliss of Jupiter’s love and attentions, the librettist actually modifies Congreve’s initial stage directions. Even though the text is still couched in the third person, it is now Semele herself who sings and expatiates on the sexual satisfaction provided by her removal to her celestial palace. The text clearly suggests the highly private nature of the proceedings, going so far as to draw an implicit analogy between Jupiter’s bolt and thunder, now lying uselessly at the foot of Semele’s bed, and more potent ways of stimulating electric excitement! Modern stage productions of the work, no doubt encouraged by the overt sexual connotations of the words, all tend to show Semele capering about her bed, teasingly gesticulating in her effort to convince herself of the blissfulness of her present situation:6
Second Augur/Semele
Endless pleasure, endless love,
Semele enjoys above;
On her bosom Jove reclining,
Useless now his thunder lies,
To her arms his bolts resigning,
And his lightning to her eyes. (i.iv)
- 7 See Pierre Degott, Haendel et ses oratorios: des mots pour les notes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, pp. (...)
10The sexual imagery introduced in the first scene of the act, notable for its association between the themes of fire and fertility/potency,7 is further developed by Newburgh Hamilton’s transformations, all meant to prolong the bedchamber scene far beyond Congreve’s initial intentions. Not only does the librettist obliterate Congreve’s stage directions for Act ii scene iv, making it plain that the setting of the bedchamber is the same until the end of the act, but he also adds thirty-odd lines supposed to further the erotic nature of the scene. In Act ii scene iii, the sensuous, pastoral dimension intended by Congreve is reinforced by the addition of the universally famous aria “Where’er you walk”, the words of which are actually a direct quotation from Pope’s second pastoral (lines 73–76):
- 8 John Butt, ed., The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selec (...)
Jupiter
Where’er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where’er you tread, the blushing Flow’rs shall rise;
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes. (ii.iii)8
11Meant here to soothe and to quieten Semele’s appetites, Jupiter’s words actually reinforce the erotic connotations of the bedchamber scene, even though the meaning of the verb “to fan” contradicts that of its occurrence at the opening of the scene. In Cupid’s aria – a piece actually set to music by Handel but eventually removed from the final version – the word “to fan” is used in its more traditional sense of kindling, or stirring up, Semele’s desire:
Cupid
Come, Zephyrs, come, while Cupid sings
Fan her with your silky wings.
New desire I’ll inspire,
And revive the dying flames. (ii.ii)
- 9 McKenzie, ed., The Works of William Congreve, vol. 2, p. 238 (“Argument introductory to the Opera o (...)
12The vision of the bedchamber as a place of carefree pleasure, sexual licentiousness and libidinous luxuriousness is in keeping with the description of Semele’s “private abode”9 that Iris gives Juno in the first scene of the act:
Iris
There, from mortal cares retiring,
She resides in sweet retreat.
On her pleasure, Jove requiring,
All the Loves and Graces wait. (ii.i)
13The erotic contents of the words are made even more obvious in Act iii, notably in the sequence made up of scenes ii–vii.
- 10 The parallels between the bedchamber scenes in Semele and Wagner’s Lohengrin have been duly analyse (...)
14Act iii begins with the scene in which Juno asks Somnus, the god of sleep, to titillate Jupiter’s sexual ardour by sending him a dream “in shape of Semele”. Juno is aware that should the lovesick Jupiter grant Semele’s wish to see her lover in his godly splendour, so as to satisfy his own burning desire, the fulfilment of Semele’s wish will prove fatal to the young woman:10
To Morpheus then give order, …
That with a dream in shape of Semele, …
He may invade the sleeping deity;
And more to agitate
His kindling fire,
Still let the phantom seem
To fly before him,
That he may wake impetuous,
Furious in desire. (iii.i)
- 11 George Frideric Handel, Semele, ed. Ebenezer Prout, London, Novello, 1878, 50 (pp. viii, 189).
15Again, the text spins out the analogy between fire and sexual activity, the verb “to agitate” taking up, in a context dealing with sexual kindling and excitement, quite a new meaning. The Victorians apparently felt it safer to expurgate the text of its overly explicit contents. “That he may wake impetuous / Furious in desire” was thus modified into the seemingly more acceptable “That he may wake with longing, / Wake with new desire”.11 Be that as it may, the fire/sexual drive analogy is resumed during the bedchamber scene proper, especially in the passage in which Juno, disguised as Ino, maliciously advises Semele on how she should handle and capitalise on Jupiter’s sexual frustration:
Juno/Ino
When Jove appears,
All ardent with desire,
Refuse his proffer’d flame
‘Till you obtain a boon without a name. (Semele iii.iii)
16In this context, the use of the term “flame” forces a parallel between Jupiter’s feelings for Semele (“proffer’d flame”) and his own lightning, for which the term was used in Act i scene vii: “When Semele around her head / With azure flames was grac’d” (i.vii). In other words, the polysemy of the term is a way for the playwright and librettist to establish a parallel between Semele’s death, caused by a flash of lightning, and the sexual fulfilment provided by Jupiter’s “proffer’d flame”. References to Jupiter’s thunderbolt, as they occur in the two bedchamber scenes, thus become a metaphor for sexual power and death, irremediably linking up Eros and Thanatos as well as creation and destruction. If destruction is materialised by the death of Semele, creation appears with the impending birth of Bacchus, announced in the final number of the opera:
Apollo Apollo comes to relieve your care, And future happiness declare. From tyrannous love all your sorrows proceed, From tyrannous love you shall quickly be freed. From Semele's ashes a phœnix shall rise, The joy of this earth, and delight of the skies: A God he shall prove More mighty than Love, And a sovereign juice shall invent, Which antidote pure The sick lover shall cure, And sighing and sorrow for ever prevent. Then mortals be merry, and scorn the blind boy; Your hearts from his arrows strong wine shall defend: Each day and each night you shall revel in joy, And when Bacchus is born, love’s reign at an end. (Congreve iii.ix)
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Apollo Apollo comes, to relieve your care, And future happiness declare. From Semele's ashes a phœnix shall rise,
The joy of this earth, and delight of the skies: A God he shall prove More mighty than Love, And sighing and sorrow for ever prevent.
Chorus of Priests Happy, happy shall we be, Free from care, from sorrow free. Guiltless pleasures we’ll enjoy, Virtuous love will never cloy; All that’s good and just we’ll prove, And Bacchus crown the joys of love. (Hamilton iii.ix)
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17The death scene of Semele in Act iii scene vii, the scene that appears as the culmination of the second bedchamber sequence (“The Scene discovers Semele, under a Canopy”), thus appears, metaphorically, as the final intercourse in which the young heroine experiences not only her own demise but also the final fulfilment of her unreasonable expectations. The passage in which Jupiter, bound by his unwise promise, prepares himself for the fatal blow he has to deal to his beloved Semele, once again resorts to the fire imagery rampant throughout the libretto:
Jupiter
Anon when I appear
Jupiter
The mighty thunderer,
Arm’d with inevitable fire,
She needs must instantly expire. …
My softest lightning yet I’ll try,
And mildest melting bolt apply;
In vain – for she was fram’d to prove
None but the lambent flames of love. (iii.v)
18Adjectives expressing tenderness and sensuality (“softest”, “mildest”) are thus combined with those taken from the lexical fields of fire and violence (“mighty”, “thunderer”, “arm’d”, “lightning”, “bolt”, etc.). Later, in the passage depicting Semele’s death, the term “consuming” also indirectly evokes the idea of consummation, Eros and Thanatos being irremediably united in Semele’s final breath, which suggests both the excesses of passion (“I burn, I burn”) and the final appeasement in death (“I can no more”):
Semele
Ah me! too late I now repent
My pride and impious vanity.
He comes! far off his lightnings scorch me,
Ah! I feel my life consuming:
I burn, I burn, I faint, for pity I implore –
Oh help, oh help – I can no more. (iii.vii)
- 12 The most extensive study of this aspect of the work can be found in John K. Andrews, “The Historica (...)
19The erotic connotations of the two bedchamber scenes in Semele, combined with the moral message visibly contained in the libretto – the hubristic Semele is duly punished for her inordinate pride, raging ambition and thirst for power – have often led Handelian scholars to see in the work a topical allusion to the paramours of King George ii, widowed in 1737 and notorious for keeping several mistresses. One of them, Amalie von Wallmoden, countess of Yarmouth, was particularly targeted.12 The work by Handel and Hamilton has thus been regarded as a morality tale aiming to alert royal favourites like Semele and Lady Yarmouth to the dangers of wanting to become the king’s equal through marriage, and to advise them to remain humble without disrupting the social order that is supposed to be held together by marriage laws. The highly moralistic verse added by Hamilton to the chorus sung after Semele’s death would appear to corroborate such an interpretation:
Nature to each allots his proper sphere
But that forsaken we like meteors err
Toss’d through the Void, by some rude shock we’re broke,
And all our boasted Fire is lost in Smoke. (iii.viii)
20However stimulating such a reading may be, at least in historical terms, it is also tempting to give another interpretation to the two bedchamber scenes that mark the opera.
- 13 Pierre Degott, “De Congreve à Haendel : les métamorphoses de Sémélé”, Bulletin de la société d’étud (...)
21Another dimension added by Handel and Hamilton might well be the meta-musical reading that I once expounded in a previous publication.13 The idea that I would like to develop here is that the very setting of Semele’s bedchamber further corroborates such an allegorical interpretation, the starting point of which was actually the concert-within-the-concert occurring at the end of Act ii. As mentioned before, Hamilton considerably expanded the scene by replacing Congreve’s initial dumbshow with a musical interlude offered by Jupiter to Semele so as to calm her unstable nerves. The scene, in the new version, includes a hymn to the music of the spheres, meant to guarantee the universal harmony supposed to rule God’s creation but also, implicitly, the conjugal peace and social order one should expect down below:
Ino
But hark, the heav’nly sphere turns round,
And silence now is drown’d
In ecstasy of sound.
How on a sudden the still air is charm’d
As if all harmony were just alarm’d!
And ev’ry soul with transport fill’d,
Alternately is thaw’d and chill’d. (ii.iv)
- 14 McKenzie, ed., The Works of William Congreve, vol. 2, p. 301.
22Incidentally, Hamilton borrowed his text, word for word, from an extract of Congreve’s poem “On Mrs Arabella Hunt, Singing” in Poems on Several Occasions.14
- 15 Brian Trowell, “Congreve and the 1744 Semele Libretto”, The Musical Times, 111 (1970), pp. 993–4.
- 16 Daniel Prat, An Ode to Mr Handel on His Playing the Organ, London, Tonson, 1722, p. 9.
23The presence of the theme of music in the bedchamber scenes opens up new areas of meaning, not only in the sense that Handel and Hamilton staged a therapeutic concert intended for Semele, the daughter of the goddess Harmonia, but also inasmuch as they set forth a discourse on the status and on the function of music and opera, at least as they were to be apprehended in the 1740s. Even if Hamilton’s source for this text is obviously Congreve’s poem, some of the words he added to the libretto also happen to feature in a text written by the poet Daniel Prat in his Ode to Mr Handel on His Playing the Organ (1722).15 Hamilton’s double borrowing thus contains a self-referential allusion to Handel in the words “… and silence now is drown’d / In rapturous notes and ecstasy of sound”, meant to refer to the music of the spheres in Congreve’s poem as well as to Handel’s music in Prat’s.16 Such a quotation would seem to equate or at least draw a parallel between Handel’s musical production and the God-sent music of the spheres. It is the dissemination of such references to the power of music that can lead one to consider the opera not only as an allegorical warning to royal mistresses, but also as a general reflection on the issue of musical representation and, more specifically, as a commentary on Handel’s current position in the world of opera.
- 17 See for instance John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel. To Which (...)
24When one recalls that Handel was supposed to have purposely disobliged Lord Middlesex by refusing to compose for him, one wonders whether another level of interpretation might not be possible. Beyond the warning to Lady Yarmouth about her misplaced aspirations, Semele could also stand as a representation of the world of opera with all its intrigues, cabals and boundless ambitions. The cultural philistines that Mrs Delany derided as “ignoramus’s” because they supported Italian opera rather than oratorio spring to mind. Semele, the Beotian princess overflowing with ambitions and demands might well also represent the quintessential opera singer, a type with which Handel had many run-ins during the years he was a composer of Italian operas. His difficulties with La Cuzzoni and other renowned singers are the subject of many anecdotes.17
- 18 See Curtis Price, “Semele (i)”, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music O (...)
- 19 “Though the Francesina came hither as second woman, and had not a voice sufficiently powerful for a (...)
25As might be expected, the music of Semele seems to encourage such an interpretation. The vocal writing for the character of Semele, particularly, calls for all the resources one might reasonably expect from a virtuoso singer: long, floating legato lines in “O Sleep”, rapid staccato passages in “Myself I shall adore”, dizzying vocal agility throughout the vocal range in “No, no, I’ll take no less”, etc. The vocal writing opted for by Handel marks a radical departure from the declamatory type of vocality privileged by John Eccles in the first setting of Congreve’s libretto,18 but also from the relatively sober style Handel had developed in his recent English oratorios and in Semele for the characters other than Semele and Jupiter. The highly florid part of the heroine must have been quite taxing for the singer of average ability that Handel had at his disposal in 1744. Elisabeth Duparc, known as La Francesina, was seriously challenged by the role she was required to create, at least if one is to believe Charles Burney, who described her as a second-rate singer,19 and also Mrs Delany, whose laconic comment written on the day after the performance – “Francesina is extremely improved” – would seem to confirm Burney’s judgment. The character of Semele, with her scales, roulades and ornaments, not to mention the whims, caprices and behaviour one sometimes associates with a temperamental diva, ought to be seen as the embodiment of Italian opera itself, the musical genre that came to be opposed to what appeared then as the more “respectable” form of the English oratorio. Such an interpretation could be seen as the extension of the reading once propounded by Ellen T. Harris, according to whom the destruction of Semele by Juno could be interpreted as Handel’s own blow dealt against the Italian opera company headed by his rival Lord Middlesex:
- 20 Ellen T. Harris, “Semele: an English Opera”, liner notes to the CD recording issued by Deutsche Gra (...)
Indeed the story of Semele can perhaps be seen as an allegory for Handel’s situation. The over-ambitious, credulous and somewhat silly opera party (Semele) is destroyed by the power and machinations of Handel and his party (Juno): “Above measure is the pleasure, which my revenge supplies.”20
26If one is to see Handel as one of the characters in the work, perhaps it would be more convincing to imagine him as Jupiter, the organiser of the musical entertainment of the bedchamber scene in Act ii, incidentally praised through the reference to the music of the spheres in its quotation in Prat’s referential poem. In that context the death of Semele, inflicted by Jupiter, could be seen as Handel’s reluctant abandonment of opera, the musical genre he had cherished and defended for so long before being forced to replace it by the less costly, more “English” and more “puritanical” form of the oratorio.
- 21 On the early reception of Italian opera in London, see Xavier Cervantès, “‘The Universal Entertainm (...)
- 22 “Congreve wrote the libretto of Semele in 1705–06, near the end of his association with John Vanbru (...)
27If one adopts this interpretation, the setting of the bedchamber can then be seen as the metaphor of the typical locale of the opera, the place of pleasure and entertainment depicted in the libretto, the venue where irrational and sensual schemes are to be perpetrated. The reception of Italian opera in London has largely shown how the hostility evinced by a portion of the public was largely based on the denunciation of excessive indulgence in sensuous music and irrational behaviour;21 in other words as the type of hedonism and pleasure-seeking that, in the libretto, Semele’s palace represents and that needs to be controlled, condemned and punished. In such a context, if one bears in mind that Congreve’s libretto had initially been designed for the opening of the new Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket,22 the reference to Semele’s “new-erected palace” (ii.i) in which “Flora the fair … all her sweets must bring” (ii.i) can also be seen as a veiled reference to the playhouse about to be erected. Semele’s bedchamber, the place of sexual and sensual indulgence but also the place where musical divertissements are to be held, is also very much the place of vocal display and operatic excesses – “No, no, I’ll take no less, / Than all in full excess” (iii.iv), Semele sings when she is on the brink of despair – the place once adored by Handel who, like Jupiter, was forced by circumstances to forsake the creation to which he had given so much energy and attention.
28The bedchamber thus acquires in Handel and Hamilton’s rewriting of Congreve’s libretto, at a time when the destiny of Italian opera in London was more than uncertain, a layer of meaning that the cultural contexts of the mid 1700s, when the new genre was just about to be established on a solid basis, could hardly have envisaged.