What draws you to Semele, Handel’s ‘bawdy opera’ as it was once called?

After the thrill of directing Handel’s Julius Caesar for Pinchgut in 2024, I’m interested in anything from the hand of this great musical and dramatic master. Drawing from Ovid, via Congreve, Handel has produced a sensual and overwhelmingly beautiful work that plays with the excitement and dangers of human beings and gods mixing together, in particular the ongoing human desire to attain immortality and godlike status. The natural order of our own world is threatened by precisely this impulse – what is the overreach of Elon Musk and other controllers of the world about but this desire? Our planet is being sacrificed to the lure of AI, in spite of its actual creators backing away in panic, fear and horror.

Erin Helyard (left) and Neil Armfield. Photo © Marnya Rothe

Can you tell us about Dale Ferguson’s design?

I love the restrictions that City Recital Hall places on productions. Our approach is to respond to the architecture of the space and find a performance that can live in a style that...