Handel composed Theodora nearly a decade after his last opera. It was his favourite oratorio, the only one based on a Christian subject, with characterful music broken into nearly 60 episodes. But a challenge in presenting any oratorio, written for static performance, is where to set it for the operatic stage.
Here’s the context: the Roman governor, Valens, orders everyone to sacrifice to Jupiter to honour the Emperor’s birthday, but Theodora, a Christian, refuses to do so and is condemned to prostitution. After she is rescued by Didymus, a Roman officer convert, both of them are sentenced to death.
At Glyndebourne in 1996, Peter Sellars located the piece in Texas, with the condemned on death row; for Katie Mitchell at Covent Garden, the action took place in a corrupt governor’s embassy under siege. And for Stefan Herheim in this 2023 production in Vienna? In an admittedly beautiful reconstruction of the city’s own elegant Café Central by designer Silke Bauer.
The audience at the Musik Theater would have recognised the famous venue on Herrengasse, and presumably Herheim intended that they should identify with its assembled chorus of patrons who observe the action from beginning to end, unable like the guests in Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel to leave the room.
To be generous, one might say the result is like one of those bottles of wine that tastes fine on holiday that just doesn’t travel. I found it impossible to reconcile the libretto with the setting, or the representation of a bloody tyrant as the head waiter of a cake shop. Would you?
For Theodora’s confinement in a brothel, she lies on a pool table, still flanked by tiers of delectable torte, and the couple’s end entails their merely being sent on their way with a rucksack. So much for tragedy.
Other idiosyncrasies involve the chorus, tourists one moment, heathens or Christians the next, all without pause, and for some reason stripped to their undies for much of the time. Spare me. Spare them.
In Herheim’s commentary, the setting is both catacombs and cathedral. Let’s face it, it’s a caff.
Musically, however, the production cannot be faulted, with conductor Bejun Mehta, a countertenor who has previously sung the part of Didymus, maintaining a perfect balance between stage and pit. Christopher Lowrey is excellent in that role, his “Deeds of kindness” the longest and most memorable in the work.
Jacquelyn Wagner properly conveys an uncertainty in Theodora’s character—or maybe is just lost in the illogicality of it all—with something more than a pure virgin love for her uncomfortable rescuer Didymus. Bass-baritone Evan Hughes sings the part of Valens with robust coloratura control, David Portillo’s tenor has a clear, ringing quality and as Irene, French-Canadian mezzo Julie Boulianne—the only non-American—has a rounded warmth of tone.
Reviewer: Colin Davison