John Eccles: Semele

Cast, band, director and sound are all top-notch, restoring Eccles’s score to its full glory...Thanks to Perkins’s deft casting, each principal’s vocalism and dramatis persona are wonderfully... — BBC Music Magazine, March 2021, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 29th Jan 2021
Catalogue No: AAM012
Label: AAM Records
Length: 2 hours 0 minutes

BBC Music Magazine

March 2021

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This release includes a digital booklet

Eccles, J: Semele

Work length2:00:42

$90.00

$108.00

$157.50

Graeme Broadbent (bass), Rory Carver (tenor), William Wallace (tenor), Jonathan Brown (baritone), Anna Dennis (soprano), Aoife Miskelly (soprano), James Rhoads, Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Héloïse Bernard (soprano), Bethany Horak-Hallett (soprano), Richard Burkhard (baritone), Christopher Foster (bass), Jolyon Loy (baritone)
Academy of Ancient Music
Julian Perkins

Overture

Track length2:35

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Behold Auspicious Flashes Rise

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Lucky Omens Bless Our Rites

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Daughter, Obey, Hear, and Obey

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Ah Me! What Refuge Now Is Left Me?

Track length2:47

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See, She Blushing Turns Her Eyes

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Hymen Haste, Thy Torch Prepare

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Alas! She Yields, and Has Undone Me

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Why Dost Thou Thus Untimely Grieve?

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Symphony (1)

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Avert These Omens, All Ye Pow'rs! (1)

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Avert These Omens, All Ye Pow'rs! (2)

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Again Auspicious Flashes Rise

Track length1:15

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Symphony (2)

Track length0:11

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Cease Your Vows

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O Athamas, What Torture Hast Thou Born!

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Turn, Hopeless Lover, Turn Thy Eyes

Track length2:45

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She Weeps!

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Such Unavailing Mercy Is in Beauty Found

Track length1:04

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Ah Me, Too Much Afflicted!

Track length2:17

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You've Undone Me

Track length2:14

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Ah, Wretched Prince, Doom'd to Disastrous Love!

Track length1:55

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See, See, Jove's Priests and Holy Augurs Come

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Hail, Cadmus, Hail!

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Endless Pleasure, Endless Love

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Haste, Haste, to Sacrifice Prepare

Track length0:58

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Cease Your Mourning

Track length2:27

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Symphony

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Iris, Impatient of Thy Stay

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There from Mortal Cares Retiring

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Thither Flora the Fair

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No More, I'll Hear No More

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Not One of Curst Agenor's Race I'll Spare

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Hear, Mighty Queen

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See, After the Toils of an Amorous Fight

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Come Zephyrs, Come, While Cupid Sings

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Dance of the Zephyrs

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O Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?

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Sleep Forsaking

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Let Me Not Another Moment

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Lay Thy Doubts and Fears Aside

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Nor Was I Absent

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If Cheerful Hopes

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If This Be Love, Not You Alone

Track length1:34

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Ah Me!

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With My Frailty Don't Upbraid Me

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Thy Sex of Jove's the Masterpiece

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Thy Needless Fears Remove

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By My Command

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Symphony

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Symphony

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Somnus, Awake

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Leave Me, Loathsome Light

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Dull God, Can'st Thou Attend the Waters Fall

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Only Love on Sleep Has Pow'r

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Somnus, Arise

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More Sweet Is That Name

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My Will Obey

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Away Let Us Haste

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I Love and Am Lov'd

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Thus Shaped Like Ino

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Behold in This Mirrour

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O Ecstasy of Happiness!

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Ah Charming All O'er!

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Be Wise as You Are Beautiful

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Unknowing Your Intent

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But How Shall I Attain to Immortality?

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Thus Let My Thanks Be Paid

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Rich Odours Fill the Fragrant Air

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Come to My Arms, My Lovely Fair

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Tho' 'Tis Easie to Please You

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When I Languish with Anguish

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I Dare Not

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Oh Semele, Why Art Thou Thus Insensible?

Track length0:15

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I Ever Am Granting

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Speak, Speak Your Desire

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Swear by the Stygian Lake

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Then Cast Off This Human Shape Which You Wear

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Ah! Take Heed What You Press

Track length1:39

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I'll Be Pleas'd with No Less

Track length0:36

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Ah! Whither Is She Gone!

Track length2:02

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Above Measure Is the Pleasure

Track length2:08

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Symphony (1)

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Ah Me! Too Late I Now Repent

Track length0:49

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Symphony (2)

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Of My Ill-Boding Dream

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Apollo Comes to Relieve Your Care

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From Tyrannous Love

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Then Mortals Be Merry (1)

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Then Mortals Be Merry (2)

Track length1:43

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Interview, Julian Perkins on John Eccles's Semele

18th March 2021

The conductor and keyboardist talks about his recent recording of John Eccles's tragic Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music.

The Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera Company, Cambridge Early Music and Julian Perkins are proud to present the ﬁrst professional recording of John Eccles’s Semele (c.1707), a notable early setting of the great English libretto by William Congreve better known in a version by GF Handel from 1744. The Academy of Ancient Music’s mission is to explore, reveal and preserve the great treasure house of baroque and classical music, and a spirit of newfound discovery runs through all our work. Eccles’s Semele is the next step on this journey, released here on 2 CDs in deluxe hardback presentation with an extensive accompanying full-colour booklet containing scholarly essays, Stephen Fry’s modern re-telling of the story, autograph manuscript images of Eccles’ score, the full libretto text and much more. A fascinating insight into how opera in England might have developed after Henry Purcell’s death had not Handel moved to London in 1712, Eccles’s Semele is the perfect addition to any baroque-music lover’s library.

Reviews

March 2021

Cast, band, director and sound are all top-notch, restoring Eccles’s score to its full glory...Thanks to Perkins’s deft casting, each principal’s vocalism and dramatis persona are wonderfully matched...Charlston’s Juno flares magnificently, unafraid to sound ugly when furious...The Academy of Ancient Music’s playing is just as fascinating. Perkins directs from the harpsichord with a demonic intensity.

April 2021

Pacing, not least in the expressive recitatives, is fluid and natural, the playing of the AAM strings tingles with theatrical life and the young cast is uniformly fine.

April 2021

It is difficult to imagine greater justice currently being done to the opera than it receives here...The hero of the performance is undoubtedly Perkins, who conducts as if every bar means the world to him, pacing the work with assurance and drawing splendid playing from the strings of the AAM...All the major roles are outstandingly taken.

January 2021

There’s fun to be had in comparing Eccles’s response to Congreve’s libretto with Handel’s setting from nearly four decades later (‘Endless pleasure’, for instance, is here a wistfully reflective aria for the lovelorn Athamas rather than a lubricious showpiece for the heroine, and the ‘mighty thunderer’ Jupiter is endowed with rather more gravitas), but the score is a delight entirely on its own terms. Dennis is a sensuous, elegant Semele, and mezzo Helen Charlston positively spits fire as her vengeful nemesis.

4th February 2021

Some of the best moments fall to jealous, scheming Juno, whose scenes spring to life more readily than some of the others; the role is dispatched here with brilliant imperiousness by Helen Charlston. The role of Semele herself is beautifully sung by Anna Dennis, and the rest of the large cast is excellent, too. Julian Perkins conducts them and the AAM players in a performance that’s gratifyingly light on its feet.

New, Offer, John Eccles: Semele

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Interview, Julian Perkins on John Eccles's Semele