Just a Notice, really, no time for a proper review before catching Eurostar very early tomorrow morning to cover a festival in Amsterdam.

But this deserves an alert for opera lovers in reach of London this week. BYO is a crown jewel in UK opera education and it has celebrated this 18th season by inaugurating a keen resident orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia. Christian Curnyn is a stylish and passionate Handel conductor and Semele (the one with Where e're you walk and many more luscious arias, duets and choruses) was given loving treatment. It is a farrago of Gods and Mortals, Semele Jupiter's secret mistress yearing for immortality - - - . I caught about two out of ten words (a few more got through with Handel's generous repeating) but it is by Congreve and would be far more intelligible with surtitles; our usual complaint.

Annilese Miskimmon's modern dress direction was full of flair and imagination, assisted by a splendid team, designer/movement director and lighting director, making the most of a fairly basic, moveable stage. A particular pleasure was the individuation of the chorus members, who will not have felt like also-runs in the preparatory work.

(Pict: Elizabeth Watts & chorus)

Fine standard of singing; overall, better than the (compulsory) Handel in the Queen Elizabeth Competition finals in Belgium. They were coached by leading, famous British opera singers and the organisation is well endowed and sponsored with pages of Friends etc in the programme.

We will certainly hear much more of several of the singers, and their new orchestra is billed to give interesting programmes at St James's Piccadilly and St John's Waterloo (a fine acoustic, too little used). Semele is running in double-bill with Janacek's Cunning Vixen, in a reduced orchestration by Jonbathan Dove, who is good at that sort of thing. I am sorry to have to miss it.

See also review in The Guardian

Handel: Semele
ENO at The Coliseum, 1 December 2004
Iain Paterson (Cadmus), Carolyn Sampson (Semele), Anne Marie Gibbons (Ino), Robin Blaze (Athamas), Ian Bostride (Jupiter), Morag Boyle (Juno), Janis Kelly (Iris), Paul Reeves (Somnus)
Robert Carsen (original director), John La Bouchardière (revival director)
ENO orchestra and chorus/Laurence Cummings

ENO has made strides towards period authenticity, and the small orchestra gave Handel's score in the King's Music edition, with a couple of harpsichords and gamba, and a highly visible theorbo, for reassurance. However Laurence Cummings' efforts in the pit were usually at odds with what we watched on stage.

The revival of this production of Handel's secular oratorio, generally admired, has split critical responses and we found ourselves siding with the Noes, whilst glad to see the Yeses, of which ConcertoNet's, as so often, seems the most apposite, well worth reading.

From the other camp, Anthony Holden in the Observer found it a travesty of Handel and will serve to convey our own out-of-it reactions to Robert Carsen's direction, which looked expensive but had no pleasures to compare with those of British Youth Opera's stylish interpretation on a shoestring.

How much it has been altered since 1999 by John La Bouchardière, who is touring this revival around Europe, one knows not. (He was responsible for The Full Monteverdi about which my misgivings are echoed most cogently by Early Music Review (November 2004), which found his approach to Guarini's texts for Monteverdi's madrigals likewise a travesty).

Even sitting near the front one is conscious of the huge auditorium of the Coliseum, forcing Carole Sampson to some stridency in her self-admiring showpiece (see programme cover illustration) to reach the furthest and highest listeners; several of the performances were too intimate and projected inadequately from far back on the stage, which made for coordination difficulty. Paul Reeves made little mark whilst made to sing recumbent behind gauze in the Somnus scene lie-in, but was fine once he was up on his feet and front stage. The unwieldy chorus which, to satisfy oratorio conventions, is brought in often inappropriately, seemed inclined to lag a little behind Laurence Cummings' beat.

The show didn't come to life for us until Morag Boyle, Patricia Bardon's understudy, made a hit as a short-sighted Juno, looking like Queen Victoria in a great double-act with Janis Kelly.

Not infrequently, and as often in the past, we were pleasurably distracted from the shenanigans on stage by the expressive signing for the deaf of Wendy Ebsworth, who manages to encapsulate the emotions of the singers with simple gestures. But don't be too put off; the audience, and many critics too, have enjoyed this show, which is typical of ENO's determination to popularise opera with directorial gimmickry and anachronistic titillation, which ensures controversy - follow my links below.

Anthony Holden in The Observer- - [Robert Carsen's] vulgar production of Handel's Semele at English National Opera - - obsession with beds requires the chorus to troop in and out like voyeurs; and again his attention to style over substance defies the composer's intents. - - Carole Sampson makes a lightweight, reedy Semele, with little of the sex appeal of a diva required to bare all, while Bostridge is his usual anaemic stage self - - too pallid, gangly and boyish to jangle glands of either gender. - - The chorus were on top form, making the most of two simulated-sex orgies, and the first-night audience loved it despite Laurence Cummings's robotic conducting. This slick show is a travesty of Handel at his most ethereal.

Helen Elsom in ConcertoNet