Director, Katie Mitchell; Set designer, Chloe Lamford; Conductor, Harry Bicket. Cast – Theodora: Julia Bullock; Irene: Joyce DiDonato; Didymus: Jakub Józef Orlinski; Septimius: Ed Lyon; Valens: Gyula Orendt; Marcus: Thando Mjandana
It’s interesting that while we place huge emphasis now on what musical performance practice would sound like for Handel, and what authentic instrumental sounds would be appropriate, directors don’t necessarily consider what (in this case) an 18th century audience coming to Theodora for the first time would bring with it in terms of expectations and assumptions. Would they bring a Gibbon-ish suspicion of the Christians and feel automatically for the Roman position, or would they be conflicted between – probably-taken-for grant-but-nonetheless–real – Christian faith, and their 18th century approval of classical Roman values and culture? In fact, my reading of the performance history of Handel’s oratorios is that their audience would have been the solid commercial middle classes, so it is likely probably that the piety angle would have predominated. How well then would Katie Mitchell’s production have served that 18th century English audience? Pretty well, actually, in the sense of a group of Christians being shown as who they were and under clear oppression – there were scenes of a baptism for Didymus, a wedding with a priest for Didymus and Theodora, some signs of the cross – it was thus clear throughout who the Christians in the opera were, and that they were being oppressed.
It was less clear how the concept of the ‘Roman Embassy’, with the Christians working as domestic staff and an unpleasant male group of Roman diplomats, really fitted with the overall theme of the opera. It would have been much better to show how the Christians were being oppressed by a brutal regime with obviously wider powers than just an ‘Ambassador’. I guess part of the point was to show the male aggression exhibited by suave suited diplomats, the exploitation of the female Christians, and the feminine resistance to it, but I am not sure that the feminist angle totally worked well alongside the Christian persecution aspect. The programme notes referred to the contemporary Richardson novel, Clarissa, and this was obviously part of the production’s thinking – but I am not sure that Christian martyrdom Is quite as meek and submissive as Clarissa’s personality would suggest……This difficult blend of feminism and Christianity was at its most incoherent and glaring at the end of the opera, where, rather than submitting to martyrdom, the Christians rise up and kill their male Embassy oppressors, rescuing Theodora and Didymus. The reviews, and maybe the programme notes, referred to a Christian fundamentalist terrorist group, but this really didn’t come across clearly in what I saw on stage – one reviewer, I remembered after the performance, had mentioned bomb-making going on in the first scene, but this wasn’t at all obvious from what I saw. The other issue for me was what was happening to Irene – while it was clear enough at every stage what was happening to Theodora, Irene’s fate seemed a bit mixed-up. She was arrested at the same time as Theodora but not subjected to the same penalties and she seemed to be carrying on working in the same kitchen – or was she being hidden away from the male Roman Embassy staff by other Christians in the kitchen? Not clear…
However within the frame of the ultimate feminism/Christianity incoherence I thought the production worked well enough. The set was a series of boxed frames, a set of stages within a stage, representing from left to right, a plush brothel, a sleazy pole-dancing bar, the main reception area, a corridor, the kitchens where the Christians worked, and the utility room-cum-store room, with haunches of meat hanging down and whirring spin-driers. The stage boxes moved so that you could see at any one time two or three of them. The sleazy aspect – red plush seats for the pole dancing bat – was extremely well – but not over-done. The disadvantage of the framed boxes is that they put the singers quite far back on the stage, and to some extent must have cramped their acting style – possibly also boxed in their voices to some extent. There was, perhaps inevitably a lot of ‘business’ going on around the long arias, and some very well-conceived slow-motion movement scenes – not least the killing of the male Embassy staff, which was very effective and convincing.
There were many gorgeous arias, and a very good group of singers to deliver them. Maybe Julia Bullock came across less well than she might otherwise have done because of the boxed structures – her voice didn’t really soar or have the introspective beauty of Joyce DiDonato or Jakub Józef Orlinski, and I thought occasionally the orchestra over-powered her (maybe in Mitchell’s conception that’s part of Theodora’s struggle). The tenor and bass were good too. All had the vocal agility to deal with Handel’s complex vocal writing. The stand-out moment, perhaps inevitably, was the lovely “As with rosy steps the Morn” – one of Handel’s most beautiful arias and sung by Joyce DiDonato with one of those moments only opera delivered at its best can offer – as her voice floated into the theatre in its higher range, that special form of silence took hold of the auditorium and time stopped……. Very near it in intensity was her unaccompanied singing in ‘Lord, to Thee each night and day’, compellingly intimate and soft. Harry Bicket kept things moving with the orchestra without launching into Baroque scrambles
John's musical journey 