Opera
Theodora
(Glyndebourne Touring Opera)
Handel surprises
Michael Tanner
Having missed Handel's oratorio Theodora at Glyndebourne this year, and read ecstatic reports about it from every- one except my predecessor, I looked for- ward to seeing it in Norwich's Theatre Royal. I was interested, too, to see what standards Glyndebourne Touring Opera sustained; I'd just seen the video of the home production, by Peter Sellars, and had been extremely impressed by most aspects of it, though I'd sworn that I would never endure another production of his after last year's horrific Mathis der Maier.
The tersest summary I can give of the impression the work in this production made on me is that it is sublime, just this side of tedium. That came as a surprise, because I normally find staged Handel merely undramatic, unless there is so much irrelevant business that one's mind is taken off the music. In Theodora that does hap- pen at the beginning. The Roman governor Valens is portrayed as a Clinton-figure, not a bad idea if you are going to set the piece, as of course Sellars compulsively does, in the contemporary United States. Valens has an enormous and tedious aria, and to liven things up at this critically early stage Sellars has him having a heart attack dur- ing the last five minutes of it, so that paramedics race in and administer oxygen, etc., while he continues to sing. This is dan- gerous, because it suggests that the attack is due to the hair-raisingly lengthy coloratu- ra he has to dispatch rather than to his The first production turned out to be an imposter' being in political overdrive; hence the medium which we are being wooed to take seriously is apparently also being sent up. The solution would have been drastic prun- ing of the music. Even Winton Dean has written of Part I: `Although the leisurely pace of the action might be pleaded in jus- tification the effect in modern performance is wearisome. This can be remedied by cuts.' Who are we to disagree, especially when the tempi are as relaxed as they are under Harry Bicket, faithfully taking over the baton from William Christie? At Nor- wich, where there were two very brief inter- vals, the work lasted for 4 hours and 10 minutes.
And yet it is quite marvellous, and I shall see it again as soon as I can. The set, already famous for its simplicity and its five enormous glass vessels, flawed and fragile, as are the human beings we encounter in the work, provides, thanks to wonderful lighting, a perfect frame for the intense but sluggish drama that unfolds. Because it is such a generous addition to the repertoire, I am loath to criticise it, lacking the space to make the criticism seem substantial. The gist of my unease is that the pace and focus of the drama bear insufficient relationship to that of the music.
The drama is on the surface a straight- forward one — Christians versus Romans, the latter victorious in a worldly way but the former in the elevation of spirit, as well as, for once, having all the best tunes. There are complexities, though, in the dia- logue and in the setting, which rarely syn- chronise. The hero, the closet Christian Didymus, in love with Theodora, and final- ly put to death with her, has as his best friend Septimius, a pagan with a strongly sympathetic streak, who even allows Didy- mus into the prison where Theodora is incarcerated. Yet Sellars has decided that it is Septimius who should be their execution- er — the machinery for the judicial murder is hideously elaborate, and to judge from recent reports, the two victims are given realistically lengthy music to sing while the various devices are brought into play and finally achieve their end.
And I haven't yet mentioned the most intriguing character of all, Irene, wise friend of Theodora, who doesn't actually do anything, but has the most glorious music (`As with rosy steps the dawn') and manifests a wholly convincing steadfast- ness. It may be a measure of the strangeness of this work that Irene is so fascinating without being an agent. It seems to be part of Handel's development in this oratorio that action is not the thing (its first production in 1750 was a flop); his music here is of a purity and spareness which' is unlike most things he had ever composed. The man who usually gives me the impression of being the Rubens of music, wholly at home in the material world, has moved for long stretches of Theodora into his last period, yet enough of the old kind of thing remains for it to take Mother and Child with Ceiling Mirror Putti' (above) is one of 31 recent paint- ings by John Wonnacott which can be seen at Agnew's, 43 Old Bond Street, London WI, until 6 December.
a long time — at any rate with me — for the penny to drop.
The performance was musically on a suitably exalted level, above all from Anne Dawson's Theodora and Susan Bickley's Irene. Both acted with extreme conviction. The Robson brothers, Christopher and Nigel, were the two chief male characters. Christopher Robson's Didymus is an incomplete success partly because he needs to look romantic — it is one of the central strengths of the work that the central char- acters are in love as well as being passion- ately devout, and economically express both their chief feelings simultaneously and partly because he is that kind of counter-tenor which does seem to militate against sexuality. In the transcendent final scene, however, as the two lovers sing their radiant farewells to this world, Robson rose to Dawson's level. The busy chorus, whether as Christians or Coke-swilling red- necks, were on magnificent form. I left the theatre uplifted — a good thing, consider- ing the huge walk back to the hotel. If the tempi had been a bit more flexible, and some of them considerably more rapid, not only would I have been on a still bigger high, but there might even have been some taxis around.
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