If directors will insist on staging Handel oratorios as if they’re operas, it makes sense to pick Semele, which is practically an opera already. Under George II, opera was banned in London theatres during Lent (too exotick, too irrational), so Handel slipped his best material past the authorities by presenting it in concert format, set
Joélle Harvey and Jennifer Johnston are ravishing, and the chorus sensational, but Adele Thomas’s staging feels neither funny nor erotic enough for what is essentially a barbed Restoration comedy