Semele review – Handel's celestial opera remade as a Technicolor romcom

Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Stokenchurch
Annilese Miskimmon’s beautifully sung but sardonic production lends the saga of the gods some of the vividness and surreality of early 60s Hollywood Annilese Miskimmon’s sardonic new production of Semele reimagines Handel’s parable of desire and ambition as a romcom that turns increasingly malign and surreal. Nicky Shaw’s designs, awash with cinematic allusion, suggest the early 1960s: our awareness of the impending sexual revolu