Dear Friends:

Welcome to our company’s first baroque opera.  This version of Handel’s Semele was created by Pittsburgh Opera in the spring of 2021, as part of that company’s initiatives to bring back live performances after the reopening of theaters.  Created with pandemic constraints in mind (believe it or not, singers were masked during the Pittsburgh performances) it is a bright example of how artists find new and exciting ways to create art during the most desperate circumstances. 

The vast majority of the repertoire performed by regional opera companies in the U.S. today was composed during the relatively short time frame between the premiere of Mozart’s The Marriage of Fígaro in 1786 and Puccini’s death in 1924. This practice throws out almost two centuries of fantastic music theater, since the Florentine Camerata invented the art form in 1600, together with the works created during our lifetimes and those of our parents.  Our company is proud to be regularly breaking the latter of those venerable boundaries with productions of contemporary and recent works, and we are now excited to break the earlier one, and venture into the world of the first golden era of opera, when opera singers were the day’s rock stars, and productions were over-the-top outrageous.  

Baroque music is probably more misunderstood than any other.  When we look at the portraits of Handel, Vivaldi, and Bach, we see their powdered wigs, stiff overcoats, and unsmiling faces, and forget that those artists were as passionate, playful, and, yes, crazy as we are. Furthermore, laborious scholarship and officious performance practice edicts often result in overly long and antiseptic performances. 

Our production of Semele was not created with the experts in mind.  We believe that preconceptions are the worst enemy of good music theater, so our goal has been to put together an entertaining show with ninety minutes of the best vocal music ever written, featuring amazing singers.  Handel, the composer of The Messiah, was above all a man of the theater.  He would have wanted you to have a good time. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.  Maybe you’ll even be inspired to learn the Charleston!

– Kostis Protopapas, Artistic & General Director