Handel: Theodora

Continuing our exploration of Handel oratorio in 'staged' concert performances, Christophe Rousset brings his trademark operatic panache to this transcendental work. The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are joined by an international cast of soloists, each of them acclaimed for their thrilling performances of Handel.

London in 1750: rocked by earthquakes, and stunned by the 65-year-old Handel’s penultimate oratorio. The adopted Englishman had abandoned his tried-and-tested Old Testament formula for a work set in Christian times, and ending not with triumph and fanfare, but the minor-key death of hero and heroine.

The 18th-century audience shunned Theodora, but 225 years later this story of devotion and martyrdom is firmly recognised as a masterpiece, containing some of Handel’s greatest arias (‘As with rosy steps the morn’; ‘With darkness deep’; ´Angels ever bright and fair’), and choruses which range from the rollicking to the pious to the anguished.

The Monteverdi Choir is amongst the world’s greatest exponents of Handel oratorio, and Theodora requires the choir’s whole expressive spectrum, stretching from the piety of oppressed Christians, to the orgiastic revels of Roman pagans.