Search - Pinchgut Opera :: Handel: Semele

Australian pressing. Australian record label ABC Classics have released a live recording of Handel's Semele. This a fascinating and entertaining first ever production by the Pinchgut Opera, Sydney's newest opera company in whose ranks, we are told, are some of Australia's finest opera singers. Handel's Semele is neither an oratorio nor an opera, but a mixture of the two; sometimes referred to as a `pastoral'. Described by biographer Herbert Weinstock in 1959 as an, "actionless opera." the work was first performed as a `concert version' (like an oratorio) at Covent Garden, London in 1744 and first produced as a `staged presentation' (like an opera) in Cambridge in 1925. 2004.