Theodora, What Handel considered his best oratorio—the story of a Christian martyr in 4th-century Antioch forced into prostitution for defying the emperor’s orders—comes staged for the first time at the Teatro Real in Madrid, between November 11 and 23. , with the rereading of the renowned British director Katie Mitchell. In the co-production of the Royal and the Royal Opera House of London, the temple of the eastern city where the original story takes place becomes a modern embassy with a brothel hidden among its halls and, as one of the main features of the work of the director, the submissive Christian drawn by Thomas Morell (Händel’s librettist) becomes an indomitable guerrilla.
“The radical change in this production is that the character is not passive, he is not waiting for fate, but rather he rebels, even in a violent way,” said Joan Matabosch this Monday at the presentation of the show. And so much so that the passive Christian of the 4th century is here a fundamentalist, a member of the Christian resistance ready to make bombs to destroy the male-dominated pagan Roman system. Julia Bullock, the renowned soprano who plays her and who has also had an active participation in the drama, has defended Mitchell’s feminist reinterpretation: “Artists are aware of social problems and the political climate and they talk about it constantly. This work can be interpreted in many ways, like all of them, what is certain is that misogyny and patriarchy are part of practically all cultures. What Katie (Mitchell) does is ask why and until when.” The production in Madrid is in charge of Dan Aylin, Mitchell’s assistant in London, who explains the vision of the staging: “What we do is that the entire play is seen through Theodora’s eyes, even though during the first half hour “It doesn’t appear because there are only many men.”
For Joan Matabosch, Händel’s “is an incredibly radical work for its time.” Perhaps for this reason, its premiere at London’s Convent Garden in 1750 was not a success and was withdrawn after only three performances. The first oratorio in which the German composer abandoned the themes of the Old Testament did not cause any interest in the English public of the 18th century. It took more than two hundred years for it to be considered a masterpiece, filling and being enjoyed in theaters around the world. For Ivor Bolton, musical director of the proposal at the Real, Theodora “It is the best oratorio and one of the best compositions that Handel ever wrote.” Bolton celebrates that it is now presented as an opera, abandoning one of the traditionally essential features of the oratorio: its unstaged interpretation. “This oratorio has the same dramatic impulse as any opera, this possibility of staging it gives it wings and makes it reach a larger audience.”
On the Real stage, in addition to Bullock, the characters will be performed by voices such as those of the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the role of Irene; countertenor Iestyn Davies as Didymus (a Roman guard here turned member of embassy security, in love with Theodora); and tenor Ed Lyon as Septimus.
Mitchell’s production, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in 2022, caught the public’s attention, before its premiere, for having an “intimacy coordinator” to facilitate the assembly of the show’s sex scenes. “We are used to seeing scenes of sexual assault in operas, it is not good, but they have to be done. The intimacy coordinator works like some movement or fight coordinator, it is about doing the scene truthfully, but safely, without those involved going through unpleasant moments. In this world we all know actors who have done scenes that make them feel uncomfortable,” said Dan Ayling at the press conference. The Teatro Real, like the Royal Opera in London, warns in the show’s listing that there are “violent scenes, themes of terrorism, harassment and sexual exploitation.”