Performer: Elaine Tate

Alice's story in a sparkling outdoor production for families, which will not disappoint mainstream opera enthusiasts.

We are in a small Cotswold market town in 1810. It's the height of the Napoleonic wars, fear of Bonapartist spies abounds. A stranger rolls into town - a roving man whose profession is rounding up wild horses for the military - and wins the hand of the daughter of the town Constable in a bare knuckle prize fight. Somehow, you just know that there's going to be trouble.

No wonder the 1744 audience was shocked by this “oratorio” which, far from drawing on Biblical themes, displays before us the sexual misdemeanor of the immortal Jove, with a mortal, Semele.