‘The generality of the world have ears and hear not’, wrote Handel’s friend Mary Delany of the failure of Theodora in 1750. Running for just three nights, it proved the biggest flop of the composer’s career. If we can believe the librettist, Thomas Morell, Theodora was Handel’s own favourite among his oratorios. While Morell was doubtless promoting his own interests, his claim somehow rings true. Predominantly grave and inward-looking, Theodora is a world away from the bellicose Israelite nationalism that had made Samson, Judas Maccabaeus and Joshua Handel’s most popular oratorios. The story of Christian martyrs in Roman-occupied Antioch inspired music of rare poignancy, suffused with the ageing composer’s awareness of the beauty and transience of life. Theodora is the only Handel oratorio with an unmitigatedly tragic ending, doubtless one reason why ‘the generality of the world’ stayed away.

After over two centuries of near-total neglect, Theodora is now a Handelian staple. On disc the front-runners have been Paul McCreesh and William Christie, in both his live Glyndebourne recording and his studio version. The starry cast assembled by Maxim Emelyanychev, fresh from his Gramophone Award-winning Agrippina (Erato, 4/20), immediately promises strong competition. Yet while there are many moments, even whole scenes, to savour on this new version, final impressions were distinctly mixed.

The finest performance – and the biggest single reason for acquiring the recording – is Joyce DiDonato in the role of Theodora’s confidant Irene. True to form, DiDonato probes emotional extremes, denouncing the world’s vanities with snarling contempt in her opening aria, ‘Bane of virtue’, and making ‘Defend her, Heav’n’ a journey from rapt inwardness to naked anguish at Theodora’s plight. She vindicates the slow tempos, here and in the radiant ‘Lord, to thee each night and day’, through the sheer concentrated intensity of her singing.

In the title-role, Lisette Oropesa’s distinctive vibrato – fluttery or shimmering, according to taste – may initially disconcert. But she is an involving heroine, passionate in her declarations of faith, more determined, less vulnerably resigned than either Susan Gritton for McCreesh or Sophie Daneman in Christie’s studio recording. I was less taken by countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian in the castrato role of Theodora’s platonic lover Didymus. There’s urgency and ardour aplenty in his singing. His tone, though, can be unsteady, with a tendency (especially in ‘Deeds of kindness’) both to swoop and to hoot on high notes. While Didymus’s final duet with Theodora is duly touching, an ultra-jaunty tempo robs ‘Sweet rose and lily’ of grace and charm. Robin Blaze for McCreesh and Daniel Taylor for Christie are spot on here.

Michael Spyres, famed above all in Berlioz, adapts his muscular tenor sensitively to the music for the sympathetic Roman officer Septimius. ‘Descend, kind pity’, taken broadly, is smoothly, tenderly sung. Against that, he and the strings trip too blithely through the minuet aria ‘From virtue springs each gen’rous deed’. Singing with firm, sonorous tone, John Chest makes the Roman governor Valens – a man always in a hurry – a properly dangerous figure. He rattles through ‘Cease, ye slaves’ in record time, egged on by frenzied strings, yet emerges with coloratura intact.

From the punchy, hyperactive Overture, Emelyanychev’s Il Pomo d’Oro, based on 18 strings, are always vivid participants. The 16-strong choir, well balanced with the orchestra, evidently relish the extrovert Roman choruses, not least the lusty, folksy ‘Queen of summer’. But – and this is the biggest obstacle to an outright recommendation – Emelyanychev seems to downplay the gravitas of the Christian choruses, especially the sublime choruses that close each of the three acts. The funeral-march opening of ‘He saw the lovely youth’, taken at a smart two-in-a-bar, is loud and prosaic, a world away from the halting, fearful tread of McCreesh and Christie. And the Romans’ one moment of introverted wonderment, the potentially haunting ‘How strange their ends’, is here almost aggressively assertive. I’ll keep this for DiDonato and fine solo moments elsewhere. But for me, McCreesh and Christie, both with consistently fine casts, catch more surely the contemplative ecstasy that lies at the heart of Theodora.