UK Edition
Review
Theodora, BBC Proms review: though immaculately performed, Handel’s sanctimonious oratorio was faintly tedious
Normally I’m sceptical of the fashionable practice of staging oratorio theatrically, but this was an occasion where I longed for some additional element of dramatic animation.
Handel’s Theodora, composed in 1749 to a blunt text by the Revd Thomas Morell, certainly needs something to liven it up a bit: set in third-century CE Antioch, it is among the most primly sanctimonious of Handel’s works, pitching the nasty pagan Roman Governor Valens against a coven of whiter-than-white persecuted Christians, all of them dismally chaste and starchily virtuous. Of blood and thunder, of sexual passion or boiling rage, is there none.
Georgian London gave it a swift thumbs down – the box-office takings ran to barely a hundred quid – and over the next two and a half centuries Theodora survived mainly through a few anthologised arias and choruses, until a superb 1996 production at Glyndebourne, directed by the impish Peter Sellars, shook it into life by giving the narrative a context in modern religious persecution and casting in the principal roles David Daniels, Dawn Upshaw and above all, the late lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
The shadow of that marvellously vivid and involving performance (happily still accessible on a DVD) hung over this unimpeachable but faintly tedious concert version: perhaps in an auditorium smaller than that of the Royal Albert Hall, it would have had more impact.
This is no reflection on the competence of the excellent musicians involved. Jonathan Cohen conducted the period orchestra of Arcangelo with an ideal combination of precision and delicacy; the choir articulated both the text and the fugal vocal lines immaculately, making something glowingly beautiful out of “He saw the lovely youth”.
The soloists were all very accomplished too. In the title-role, Louise Alder sang with unfailing poise and clarity, particularly in her long solo scena in part 2. Iestyn Davies, Benjamin Hulett and Tareq Nazmi made stylish contributions – Hulett’s delivery of “Descend, kind pity” gave particular pleasure.
But what was crucially lacking was any sense of spiritual urgency or emotional conviction. Nobody seemed to believe; the temperature remained moderate. When Ann Hallenberg was singing the radiant “As with rosy steps the morn”, I thought, “Well, that sounds very nice”; when Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sang it, I felt her soul laid bare in the fervour of her exultation – and that is surely what Handel intended.