Gramophone Magazine
Editor's choice
March 2024

Louise Alder (Theodora), Tim Mead (Didymus), Anna Stéphany (Irene), Stuart Jackson (Septimius), Adam Plachetka (Valens)

Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen

The balance of Cohen’s vigorously confident singers and players allows him to make his ensemble a major character in the story...The soloists also play their parts, led by Louise Alder as the death-welcoming Theodora.

Among Handel's seventeen English oratorios, Theodora (1750) is unique. The story is not taken from the Bible, it is set in the Christian era, there is no national triumph and it does not end in joy. At the end, the hero and heroine are dead, the community with which the audience identifies is in mortal danger, and the final chorus is in a minor key. As a musical drama, it is the direct ancestor of Dialogues des Carmelites. At the age of 65, Handel produced a work that was too radical and complex for most of his audience. Today, Theodora is regarded as a benchmark "thinking person's opera", both deeply stimulating and powerfully moving.

"The balance of Cohen’s vigorously confident singers and players allows him to make his ensemble a major character in the story...The soloists also play their parts, led by Louise Alder as the death-welcoming Theodora." - Gramophone Magazine, March 2024