Peter Sellars’ 1996 staging of Theodora is completely different. This work wasn’t originally an opera at all, but an oratorio. Consequently it’s static, in English, and with a Christian theme. Set in fourth-century Antioch under Roman occupation, it tells of a Christian princess, Theodora, who resists an order by the governor that everyone worship at a pagan temple. As a result she’s condemned to compulsory prostitution and, when she refuses to comply, to death, along with her beloved, the Roman Didymus, a secret convert to Christianity.
Sellars sets all this in the modern US. In the opening scene, the strongest in the production, an American president, groomed by all the tricks of the advertising industry, addresses a crowd of Coca-Cola-drinking supporters, suffers some sort of cardiac crisis, and is treated on-stage by a hi-tech medical team. He then resumes his speech to the cheers of his admirers. The long-suffering Theodora (Dawn Upshaw) and her faithful Didymus (David Daniels) are finally executed by lethal injection.
Whether the sight of deadly chemicals sliding across computer screens is an appropriate accompaniment to Handel’s early 18th-century music is open to question. But at least Sellars injects drama and occasional comedy into a work that possesses little of either. At heart, however, he’s trying to teach his audiences that all very powerful men are inevitably killers into the bargain. Handel may well have agreed, but he’d never have said so. Once again, it’s the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the pit. Subtitles are in English, French and German.
With their high-pitched voices for political ruffians, their compulsive allegros and languid laments, Handel’s operas offer, at the very least, engrossing and unusual entertainment.
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