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The cast of Semele | Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

The chorus is one of the joys of Glyndebourne, which is partly why Handel’s oratorios have been such hits here since the days of that legendary production of Theodora. And the marvellously vivid chorus music that fills them is one reason to give impassioned thanks for the collapse of Italian opera in London in the 1730s, and Handel’s invention of this new English form, to which Semele adds I suppose the best-written and jolliest libretto he ever set, as well as a brilliant parable of human joy, ambition and vanity.

It’s been an exposing year for the young director Adele Thomas, still pretty new on the block but with two extremely high-profile stagings (this and the Covent Garden Trovatore) that haven’t been notably convincing, after a few really strong shows in less prominent theatres (notably Così fan tutte and Bajazet in Ireland).

Thomas sees in Semele – this great, fiery explosion of exuberance, sensuality, hubris and nemesis – just another tale of a woman undone by the wicked world of men. Which it is, on one obvious level: Semele’s as much a used-and-discarded woman as Butterfly, looked at in a certain way. And her search for self-expression and the joyful fulfilment of the senses sure does take a beating. But it’s a peculiar thing about Thomas’s view of this celebration of pleasure and delight that it is itself such a joyless experience – because Semele is absolutely the opposite of that.

Joélle Harvey as Semele and Stuart Jackson as Jove in Semele | Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Things start with a good deal of spirit. Thomas is spurred on by her own youthful desire to get the hell out of Port Talbot, and Semele is stuck in the same sort of grey, dowdy joint, the only fun to be had by getting it on with Jove in some scrubby wasteland in a thunderstorm – an episode relayed in silhouetted lightning-flashes during the overture. Marriage to Athamas is decided in a creepily ritualistic sort of way, the shabby locals carrying on as if the hillbillies of Deliverance had been transported to south Wales (echoed later when Semele’s demise is more Wicker Man than Kiss of Fire). Transported to heaven, or perhaps Swansea, Semele appears in a nice flowery bed with Jove to itemise her Endless Pleasure, driving her deserted local pals to frustrated, lustful jealousy. (Weirdly, the end of act one that should fall there was postponed for ten minutes, despite Glyndebourne’s audience-unfriendly decision to have two hour-long intervals.)

The trouble comes later, really, with Jove (Hugo Hymas standing in for Stuart Jackson) about as sexy and godlike as Timmy Mallett, and unconcerned to transform Semele’s world as promised in ‘Where’er you walk’. Handel’s painstakingly paced erotic arc has its paydirt in the raunchy chorus ‘Now Love, that laughing boy…’, but this downbeat love scene substituted musical magic with mere cuteness – that wasteland now a wildflower meadow, and a lot of certainly pleasant, twangling continuo standing in unsatisfactorily for proper deep musical engagement. Thomas is so eager to excuse Semele’s 'dangerous ambition' that the humour of Jove’s panicky responses (and of everything else) takes one look at the earnest empowerment narrative and packs its bags. By all means emphasise one side of the story, but not at the expense of everything else: Semele is a complicated three-hour piece, its heroine loveable and sympathetic as well as vain and silly, and audiences deserve better than this mean, narrowed-down version.

What’s even worse is losing the musical magic: notable at the end of act two where Ino’s arrival heralds Handel’s most rapturous mode, 'ecstasy of sound' brought to actual life in the pair’s Purcellian duet ‘Prepare then, ye immortal choir’; a lack of power and conviction in the agile but small voices of Joélle Harvey and Stephanie Wake-Edwards made nothing of this heart-stopping moment.

A scene from Semele | Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Act three was no less gloomy, humour somehow even gone from Clive Bayley’s sleepy Somnus, and Juno’s brilliant, witty viciousness tuned down to a kitchen-sink petty vengefulness in Jennifer Johnston’s sturdy performance – though I liked her spiky ‘Above measure is the pleasure…’ and wished it hadn’t been shorn its second verse (there were a few other cuts too, not always welcome). Joélle Harvey sparkled through a drably directed ‘Myself I shall adore’, but this aria needs more power and fireworks, and a sparkier orchestra, to make us forget its foursquareness. Semele’s violent demise in this monochrome conception quite lacked the dramatic pathos you find with a touch of nuance and sympathy, though Jove’s repeated laments ‘Tis past recall…’ were the closest we got to actual human warmth.

Despite considerable pluses in the forceful chorus singing, this is a baffling and pleasure-denying staging, with echoes in its dancers and yelping, neurotically directed chorus of Barrie Kosky’s much better Saul. Conducting and playing (Václav Luks and the OAE) is lively enough, but only rarely getting exciting or muscular enough. Handel’s Semele is a huge-hearted, life-celebrating piece that already contains – in spades – the things that concern Thomas, but is much larger and more generous: a metaphor for how all our joys and ambitions are undone by mortality – but are no less joyful for that.