Mark Gresham | 4 JUN 2025
When George Frideric Handel’s Semele makes its Atlanta Opera debut this Saturday, June 7, at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, the Baroque-era masterwork will be guided by the experienced hand of conductor Christine Brandes. A former operatic soprano acclaimed for her performances across Europe and North America, Brandes has steadily built a dual career as a conductor known for her stylish command of Baroque and Classical repertoire.
In this new Semele—a visually striking production directed by the company’s general and artistic director, Tomer Zvulun—Brandes leads the company’s modern orchestra in music originally written in the 18th century. With a libretto adapted from a text by William Congreve and first performed in London in 1744, Semele blends mythology and emotion in a sensual tale of love, betrayal, and ambition among gods and mortals.
Brandes, who studied conducting at the University of California, Berkeley, after a long vocal career, brings both historical sensitivity and contemporary insight to her role. She spoke recently by phone with EarRelevant’s Mark Gresham about balancing period style with modern forces, working within a visually bold staging, and what makes Handel’s music timelessly human.
Mark Gresham: What draws you to conducting Handel’s Semele, and how does your experience as a soprano shape your approach?
Christine Brandes: Semele is truly one of his great works. There’s so much glorious music in it—glorious both in the expression of unbound joy, which Handel does to a fare-thee-well, but also in deeper sentiments.
Handel, much like Mozart, is so adept at expressing more profound emotions. Not that joy can’t be deep, but things like anguish, conflicted feelings, profound regrets, longing—he’s especially good at depicting those. And the writing in Semele occupies an interesting place in his output.
It’s neither fish nor fowl. It’s not an opera in the way we’ve come to know Handel operas, which arise out of the Italian tradition, nor is it really like his oratorios based on Old Testament heroes. It occupies a unique space in Handel’s output, unchained from both the operatic tradition and Handel’s own self-established English oratorio mode, and there’s more flexibility in its forms.
Granted, we do have some traditional da capo arias, and he took a lot of flack at the opening because people were peeved. They were over the Italian form and were like, “What is this? Basically, an Italian opera masquerading as an English oratorio?” But while there are da capo arias, more often than not there are arias that are more through-composed, so the solo moments aren’t as extended by that traditional ABA structure.
We find ourselves more drawn, both dramaturgically and musically, into connected chains of events. We really sweep through larger chunks of the narrative and music without that constant micro-starting and stopping of recitative–aria–recitative–aria. It’s very compelling to me—the way the musical numbers are linked and how quickly the affect and emotional tone can shift between them.
As a singer, I’m well known in that part of my life for having sung a lot of Baroque and Classical music—as well as loads and loads of new music. While I do love the 19th century, and there’s plenty of that repertoire I’d love to conduct, I feel a very particular affinity for 17th- and especially 18th-century music, as well as music of our own time.
Having sung a lot of this repertoire and having worked with absolute geniuses in this field as conductors who are now mentors to me, I feel uniquely equipped to come to this piece with these singers. Having been a singer is my secret power. I can sense when someone is going to want more time or when someone wants to move forward. It’s a kind of singer’s sixth sense, in a way. So yes, it makes me very happy to be doing Semele.
Gresham: You’re working with a modern opera orchestra performing a Baroque score. In an era of historically informed performance, how do you balance stylistic ideals with the practical realities of modern instruments? Or is this a viable question?
Brandes: Oh, absolutely, it’s a viable question—no doubt. My job is to support Tomer Zvulun’s vision as director, serve the singers, and ultimately, serve Handel—whom I love and adore. And it’s my job to shepherd the orchestra into supporting the sort of sound world that I’m looking for.
A lot of that work happens long before I see the orchestra because, for me, I think what’s most crucial is getting as much information into the parts as I can with the help of very wise friends in the Bay Area who are switch-hitters, who have had long careers playing for the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and who also play in Baroque orchestras in town. They come to my rescue and look at my bowings.
A lot of that comes down to bowing choices—where to slur, note length, and phrasing. And then I tend to mark parts—not exactly within an inch of their lives, but nearly—with diminuendos, crescendos, lots of information in the part to start with, because then I don’t have to talk about it.
Semele (Mary Feminear) reaches to Jupiter (Alek Schrader) in a 2015 production of ‘Semele’ at the Seattle Opera. (credit: Avi Loud)
For example, in the Baroque period, it’s very rare that one goes charging into a cadence in a forte manner—as we find in later music. There’s almost always a diminuendo—especially if there’s an opening ritornello and the singer’s coming in. Unless it’s a whopping, fitful rage aria, there’s going to be this micro or macro diminuendo going into that cadence, and that’s not the knee-jerk habit of modern players.
I will say that in recent generations, and especially in the generations coming out of schools now, there’s a much greater trend toward being able to navigate historical styles a bit more than in earlier generations, where people were taught to play in just one particular way, where every note is equal.
That’s one of the harder things to get people to lighten up on: that absolutely not every note is created equal. Adjacent eighth notes are not always equal in weight and length, but that kind of detail is what brings levity and charm to this music.
It’s a big adventure, and my goal is to make this enticing, fun, and a new way of thinking about Handel. There may very well be people in the orchestra who are switch-hitters, and this will be old news to them. But for me, it’s a way of saying, “Hey, I know you might hack through the Messiah five times every year, but there is a different way to do this, and you might actually enjoy it even more.”
Gresham: The Atlanta Opera productions are known for bold theatrical concepts. How does your Baroque approach to the music of Semele interact with modern, visually driven staging that itself may not be “historically informed performance practice”?
Brandes: I’m assuming it’s going to work extraordinarily well, based on my experience with the Atlanta Opera.
I have no problem with modern settings, that kind of staging, because in a weird way—and I’ve been trying to think of a good metaphor for this—it’s like you can have an amazing wine. The wine is the same, whether served in a crystal decanter or a milk bottle. It may not be ideal, but it can still be fabulous. So, for me, I don’t have any issues with the physical production.
So far, everything’s going incredibly well. Sometimes, directors reinterpret the emotional intent of an aria—turning sweetness into irony, for example. Say the aria is filled with sweetness and longing, and they want the character to be ironic and bitter about love. Well, okay. In the end, I’m still there to serve Handel. If I understand Handel’s intention to be this sweet, sincere, somewhat pathetic thing—then that’s how the orchestra will play it.
If the singer wants to go off and serve a different idea—sing in a more angular way to support a more ironic take—well, I have no control over that. At that point, it’s not my job. I’ll enter into a discussion with the director, and I’ll try to persuade them that the musical intention is clear and should be honored.
But who knows? Maybe the contrast between the sweet music and the darker dramatic direction will actually make the irony even sharper.
Gresham: So your job is to ground the production in Handel’s score, regardless of how it’s staged?
Brandes: Ideally, there’s a meeting of minds, a marriage of vision. I’ve never experienced conflict with directors, as we all view these stories as dynamic and expressive.
I don’t treat music like a museum piece, with a kind of museum-quality reverence, because it’s meant to exist in this time and this place with us and all our complexity. I’m not suggesting that just because I’ve heard Beethoven or sung with Boulez that those things necessarily impact how this music is literally played—but we all live in this time, where we’re hearing in a completely different way.
Semele (Mary Feminear) sings from a balcony to the chorus in a 2015 production of ‘Semele’ at the Seattle Opera. (credit: Avi Loud)
For the people who were hearing Semele for the first time, it was the Boulez of the day—this was brand-new music. And obviously, we can’t begin to recreate that. Conversely, we need to come to this music with as much understanding of the practice of the time as possible. Maybe some people love hearing Klemperer conduct Mozart, but I don’t. Applying a 19th- or early 20th-century sensibility to this music kills it for me.
I would hasten to add, in my very nerdy way, that gut strings were used throughout the 19th century. In all honesty, the top string—the E string—on the violin was still a gut string well into the 20th century. So, think about Brahms’ symphonies. Think about Mahler. Or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring—the top violin string was still gut.
So this idea that there’s always been this hard, brilliant sound on that top string—it just hasn’t been there as long as people might think. That’s why John Eliot Gardiner, for example, has been doing 19th-century music with instruments set up as they were in the period. Some people have this idea that orchestral instruments suddenly leapt forward after Mozart—like the fully formed violin, or trumpet, or trombone, or clarinet just emerged, fully born, out of the head of Zeus. And that’s just not how it happened.
Everything changed over time. You hear a Steinway from 1916—wow, that’s a very different animal from a Steinway of today. So being aware of this constant evolution—not only in the equipment but also in how people approached that equipment and how composers were thinking about the instruments they were writing for—it’s all one big crazy ball of wax.
Anyway, I’m climbing down off my soapbox now.
Gresham: Any final thoughts to wrap up your perspective on this production of Semele?
Brandes: There’s a reason mythologies—whether Norse mythology, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Ovid for that matter (which Semele comes from)—resonate so strongly. Greek and Roman mythology addresses, over and over, the foibles that every single person in the audience has confronted in their lives. That’s the eternal appeal of mythology.
Even on Netflix, there’s that mad, crazy series called Kaos, with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. These are timeless stories. Take the theme of betrayal in Semele. How many women in the audience have tolerated unfaithful husbands? It’s not uncommon. And here we are, in this opera, dealing with two people of power and a wife trying to navigate and manipulate a circumstance she finds undesirable.
Then, there’s Ino’s subplot of unrequited love—in more than one direction. I mean, who hasn’t had at least a small crush on someone, knowing full well it’ll never go anywhere? And yet the painful—or delicious—agony of that is a very real thing.
And that’s what all of these operas touch upon, whether it’s Tosca or Semele. That’s what has motivated this art form for so long and people’s devotion to it: the ability to empathize and be present with these emotional circumstances. These life moments might be writ large or in seemingly unrelatable contexts on stage, but at the bottom of them are very real human truths.
That’s what’s compelling about it. That’s what’s compelling about being human—living this life with all its variety of experiences and the heights and depths of that. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Christine Brandes etudearts.com/artists/christine-brandes
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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