Semele review – selfies, sexploitation and vaping drag Handel into the present

‘Myself I shall adore!” The narcissistic aria sung by Semele – airhead and pleasure-seeking daughter of the King of Thebes – must have instantly spelt “selfie” to director Martin Constantine. His production of Handel’s musical drama for Mid Wales Opera contrives a relentlessly contemporary take on the Greek myth: a FaceTime opera where it is less deus ex machina than deus est machina. In the hands of the pervy population of Thebes, laptops, all-seeing iPads and iPhones watch every move of their princess’s dalliance with the god Jupiter.

But this is innocently vicarious by comparison with the spectacle ordained by her father Cadmus (Emyr Wyn Jones), whom Constantine makes the head of a nasty cult sect. Forced – in manacles – to marry Athamus, Semele makes her escape thanks to Jupiter’s thunderbolts, with king and populace also getting more than a bit lightning-singed.

This collaboration of MWO with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama repeats the success of three years ago, when they staged Acis and Galatea. This time, a cast of young college postgraduate students and recent graduates were accompanied by the Academy of Ancient Music, and it was they who, under conductor Nicholas Cleobury, offered the evening’s most delectable sounds, incisive and expressive.

The contrast between the subtly nuanced period-performance style and the techno-age setting was deliberate. Yet, if that was acceptable, the often gratuitous sexploitation of Semele was not. Ellen Williams sang this demanding role with much poise and promise, her voice agile with silvery charm; perhaps her own wish to the gods should be the ability to pace her career with care.

Juno, whose place Semele has taken in Jupiter’s bed, was sung by Helen Stanley: a feisty mezzo with natural stage presence, she vaped and vamped with a vengeance. However implausible her disguise as Semele’s sister Ino, her singing matched the deed, ensuring Semele’s aspiration to immortality – including body-gilding and photoshoot – was indulged, knowing full well that Jupiter will ultimately scorch her to cinders.

Mezzo Dawn Burns’ Ino was also stylishly sung and, while an apology had been made for countertenor Daniel Keating-Roberts, whose Athamus was audibly under the weather, their duet was most musically phrased. Blaise Malaba’s Somnus made his mark and, as Jupiter, Tom Smith was ably controlled performing Where’er You Walk, even if the paradise he promised didn’t satisfy Semele’s desire.

Handel’s score should have been celestial enough, but the chorus – small but strong – grooved to other music of the spheres on headphones. And their final Happy, Happy Shall We Be was not joy at Semele’s reincarnation as Bacchus, but at Apollo’s delivery of the latest new phones. It was the cue for a last burst of selfies with the urn of ashes.

• At Theatr Hafren, Newtown, on 18 February. Box office: 01686 614555. Then touring.