Available again by popular demand! Vanguard Recordings’ landmark recording of Handel’s Semele, first released in 1973, revealed the work as one of the composer’s most original operatic undertakings. For the recording, producer Seymour Solomon and conductor Johannes Somary assembled a cast of formidable singers, a mix of veterans and young talent on the verge of major opera and concert stage careers, and a superb chorus cherry-picked from London’s finest vocal ensembles. The interpretation straddles the grand British oratorio tradition and the then-exploding “early music” movement, providing an ample argument that Handel was indeed writing for full-bodied voices and large-scale entertainment, and yielding a sumptuous treat for lovers of opera, Baroque music, and terrific singing.
