OPERA
SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 2019
2:00 PM

Handel: Semele
The English Concert
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan

$16-$118
https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2019/04/14/The-English-Concert-0200PM

Handel called this story of godly philandering an oratorio, but everybody knows it's really an opera (it's just one in English, that's all).  Whatever it is -- and in an unstaged concert performance like this one, what difference does it really make? -- it's a hoot from start to finish.  Ravishing music, vocal fireworks:  the usual Handel stuff.  Even though one could imagine a more exciting conductor than Harry Bicket, The English Concert's annual Handel opera performances have become reliably special events, with good casts of often new-to-us-here singers you really want to hear, and works that would never get old even if you got to hear them often enough, which you don't. 

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Speaking of hoots, the Burger Joint hidden in plain sight in the lobby of the Parker New York Hotel is still one.