Star rating: ***
Though Theodora, Handel's last-but-one oratorio, is less easy to love than Messiah, its spiritual beauty has won it new friends and last week's performances by the SCO and its chorus, with a hand-picked team of soloists, were worth the effort. The score, while lacking show-stopping melodies, is full of limpid things. Why, then, did the Glasgow presentation, with Kenneth Montgomery, a spirited and stylish Handelian, as conductor, fall a little flat?
Partly, because the soloists, for all their eloquence, were sandwiched between the chorus and orchestra instead of being given operatic prominence at the front of the platform. Perhaps the point was being made that Theodora is not an opera, though that is how it tends now to be presented.
Yet even with Susan Gritton as the work's Christian heroine, whose martyrdom is the subject of the story, real projection is needed if the plot is not to seem a trudge. There were times, despite the presence of the mellifluous counter-tenor Iestyn Davies as her lover Didymus, and Christine Rice as her exemplary fellow-Christian, when it all sounded like the wailing wall. In this context, David Wilson-Johnson's crackling portrayal of the villainous Valens, promising "racks, gibbets, sword and fire", came like a shot of fresh air, enlivening what could otherwise have seemed a long evening on the rare occasions he appeared. Other assets were the flute, bassoon, violin and cello solos, which were effectively projected, and the quality of the chorus.
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