Beverly Sills - Handel: SEMELE, #5 Myself I shall adore, Caramoor 1969

THE SONGBIRD: Beverly Sills (1929 - 2007) presented Handel’s “Semele“ twice. First in concert in Cleveland in 1967 with Robert Shaw conducting. She sang the first performance, but missed the second and third due to illness; Phyllis Curtin stood in for her. Sills’s Cleveland “Semele“ was broadcast, so it has been available for many years and is mostly already posted on YouTube. It’s amazing. Her second run at the role was a series of three concert performances at two festivals in 1969, conducted by Julius Rudel. First was the Caramoor Festival on June 21 and July 3, followed by the Waterloo Village Music Festival on July 4. This run is not widely available and I believe I’m posting these excerpts for the first time on YouTube. I’m sharing in succession over the week all nine of Semele’s arias that were performed by Sills, taken from the June 21 performance. Sills admirers will be intrigued to hear her sing this showy role again with Rudel, mostly reusing the over-the-top ornaments that were originally devised by Roland Gagnon for Cleveland, but with some interesting variants in Caramoor. Here’s a challenge to an obsessive listener: try to count all her trills across all nine arias! If you give it a go, comment below after all nine arias have been posted, or perhaps count as you go aria by aria, then we can add them up at the end. Good luck. This is aria #5: “Myself I shall adore if I persist in gazing“ THE MUSIC: Handel’s oratorio “Semele“ premiered at Covent Garden in London in 1744. It was only performed six times during Handel’s life, but regained popularity in the 20th Century and is now regularly performed in concert and as a staged opera. The plot centers around Jupiter, a god taking human form for his affair with Semele, a beautiful self-involved mortal. Jupiter’s wife Juno discovers this adultery and plots Semele’s downfall by cunningly using Semele’s own vanity against her. At Juno’s persuasion that it will make her immortal, Semele insists that Jupiter reveal his full divine form to her -- he reluctantly agrees and his fiery thunderbolts destroy her. From her ashes arises Jupiter’s son Bacchus, god of wine and festivities.