Hard on the heels of the McCreesh recording comes this new Theodora from Germany. Let me say first that it betrays no signs of being sung in what to its performers is a foreign language; the chorus and nearly all the principals articulate Thomas Morell’s text with admirable clarity, the only exception being the countertenor, whose difficulties seem to reside less in the language than more generally in verbal articulation.
Peter Neumann directs a secure and strongly characterised reading of this noble and exalted work, and captures its drama effectively. The overture, intense and foreboding, sets the mood. Rhythms are sturdy, textures well defined. He stresses the bass line, which is very proper in baroque music, but sometimes, indeed quite often, handles it somewhat roughly, giving it force and emphasis rather than functional shape. One or two of the choruses, too, come out a bit rough and tough: ‘Forever thus stands’ in Act 1, and some of the exultant heathen choruses later – and, sadly, the fine ‘How strange their ends’, where he seems to be misled by Handel’s staccato instruction into bashing it out rather coarsely. And the speedy second section of ‘He saw the lovely youth’ somehow demystifies this marvellous piece. He does, however, secure sound and accurate singing from his choir, the right sort of size (9.9.7.7) if tonally slightly pallid to English ears.
The strongest member of the cast is the Theodora herself, Johanette Zomer, whose warm and natural singing, with some lovely soft sounds as well as ringing higher notes and a firm yet sensitively phrased line, keeps the focus of the work where it belongs. ‘Angels, ever bright and fair’ has a heartfelt reading, and the pair of airs at the beginning of Act 2 is finely done, with a quiet passion to ‘With darkness deep’ and a visionary, radiant tone to ‘Oh! that I on wings could rise’. The Irene, Helena Rasker, is strong and secure, a shade hard of tone and not particularly sympathetically drawn.
Valens, the cruel governor of Antioch, is vigorously and darkly sung by Tom Sol. Sytse Buwalda sings Didymus’s music with a refined countertenor line, has a resonant top register and sings cleanly and accurately; he rises well to the duets with Theodora, of which that at the end of Act 2 is specially finely done. Knut Schoch as Septimius provides a clear and precise tenor. All provide a little appropriate ornamentation.
There is no ‘definitive’ text for Theodora: no-one can be quite sure what Handel himself did, why or when. This version aims to reproduce a 1750 version and to take account of later cuts, although I am not sure that Handel really wanted to dispense with three middle sections and da capos in Act 1 or Septimius’s last air in that act. This is not, however, an issue. This recording has many good things, but is not truly a competitor with either of those cited above, McGegan’s, distinguished by Lorraine Hunt’s Theodora, or McCreesh’s, distinguished on almost every plane