Chicago Classical Review

Haymarket Opera Company is on a Hasse roll.

In 2023 the adventuresome Chicago period-opera ensemble treated audiences to the area premiere of German Baroque composer Johann Adolf Hasse’s Neapolitan serenata Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra. Haymarket’s stylish attention to a largely forgotten figure who was a rock star of early 18^th century Naples whetted local appetites for more.

Haymarket artistic director Craig Trompeter and friends duly obliged Friday night when they launched their 2026 season with the U.S. premiere of another worthy, if rarely heard, Neapolitan serenata by Hasse—La Semele, o sia La richiesta fatale (Semele, or The Fatal Request). The concert performance, marking the work’s 300^th anniversary, played to a packed, enthusiastic Gannon Concert Hall in Holtschneider Performance Center, DePaul University.

Prodigious in his vocal and instrumental output, “the divine Saxon” (as Hasse was nicknamed) wrote in an amiably tuneful, harmonically uncomplicated manner that at times echoed Handel, if without the searching expressivity that marks the greatest stage works of his German contemporary. Truth be told, Hasse’s arias tend to berepetitious, per stylistic convention of his day, but their melodic grace makes them hard to resist, especially when singers sail through their ornamented da capos as blithely as they did Friday.

Shifting musical fashion, coupled with the rise of Handel, doomed Hasse’s vast body of works to oblivion following his death in 1781. (For almost 40 years his grave was unmarked.) However, thanks to the advocacy of period-savvy musicians such as Haymarket, a modern revival appears to be well under way.

Hasse’s 1726 Semele, scored for three voices and strings, was designed to display the vocal star power and dramatic projection of the Italian virtuosi he had at his disposal in Naples. Like Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra, the serenata has melodic charm and vocal fireworks in abundance, its arias, duets, trios, accompanied recitatives and ritornellos recounting a love triangle involving the mythological figures Giove (Jove), Giunone (Juno) and Semele.  

Haymarket’s scholarly sleuthing turned up the single extant manuscript in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.

Hasse draws on the same mythic material Handel later used as the basis for his eponymous English opera. Francesco Ricciardi’s libretto has Queen Giunone seeking revenge on her husband/brother Giove, king of the gods, for his dalliance with a mortal beauty, Semele. Having sworn a sacred oath to honor any request that would quench Semele’s doubts of his fidelity, Giove consents to appear before his beloved in full regal majesty. Semele is consumed by fire but is reborn, at his command, in the splendor of the sun. The chastened king returns to his now-submissive queen—a decidedly un-PC plot resolution that drew chuckles from Friday’s audience.

Once again, a fresh and engaging presentation did Hasse proud.

Soprano Emily Birsan invested Semele’s ornate cantabile with tonal luster and palpable dramatic sensitivity. The Haymarket stalwart made every rapturous melodic embellishment speak volumes about the not-so-naïve object of Giove’s affections as she challenged his protestations of undying devotion. With the violins evoking gentle breezes, she caressed the long legato line of “Dolce spira venticello” in such a way as to leave no doubt as to Hasse’s mastery of vocal storytelling.   

Through the Jovian command of her singing, Elizabeth DeShong made the ever-philandering Giove a deity to be reckoned with. The bravura vocal roller-coaster ride that is his showpiece aria “Del mio fulmine,” with its fearsome octave leaps and arpeggios, reminded one of the formidable technique that informs DeShong’s plush, wide-ranging mezzo-soprano.

Karina Gauvin got to unleash vocal thunderbolts as Giunone, Giove’s jealous wife, and she did so with thrilling impact. If her soprano has hardened a bit over time, it remains a splendid vessel for the varied expressive uses to which this smart singer applies it. The queen’s largely declamatory vocal lines rang with musical truth and dramatic conviction, not least in the great duet in which the disguised Giunone cajoled Semele into getting her lover to appear before her in his true form.

With typical authority, cellist Trompeter assumed the role of primus inter pares as leader of a nine-member instrumental ensemble. Never was there a sense of the orchestra overbalancing the voices. The soft timbres and sprung rhythms of the stringed instruments, not to mention their alert accompaniments, added immeasurably to the success of the performance.

The semi-staging by general director Chase Hopkins was simple but effective. The singers sported modern dress and moved among music stands arranged in front of the chamber band. Surtitles were projected on a screen that flashed scene-setting details from pastoral paintings of Hasse’s day and ours.

The Haymarket Opera season continues with an Early Opera Cabaret, April 30 at the Arts Club of Chicago, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas June 21. haymarketopera.org

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