Description: For his 1996 Glyndebourne staging, radical American director Peter Sellars takes George Frideric Handel’s penultimate English oratorio - a tale of self-sacrificial love between a Christian virgin and a Roman imperial bodyguard in fourth-century, enemy-occupied Antioch - and, by resetting it in modern-day America, transforms it into a timeless parable of spiritual resistance to tyranny and persecution. Starring Dawn Upshaw, David Daniels, Frode Olsen, Richard Croft, and Lorraine Hunt.
Amazon.com: After an overture played on baroque period instruments, this opera about the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire opens with a televised press conference by the business-suited Roman governor of Antioch. This paradox epitomizes a bold and spectacularly successful interpretation that merges modern visuals with 18th-century music performed in period style.
The music (glorious, vintage Handel) is entrusted to William Christie, one of the most respected living conductors of early music. His phenomenal cast is musically and theatrically right on target. The staging, by Peter Sellars, has Roman legionaries garbed as a SWAT team with automatic weapons. The Roman governor is a totally political animal with a drinking problem. Dawn Upshaw and the amazing David Daniels, Christian victims, are executed not in a pit of lions but strapped to tables for lethal injections.
This treatment not only gives dramatic impact to music that began life as an oratorio; it universalizes the subject into an indictment of any government that persecutes minorities. --Joe McLellan
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Yes, but
I'm torn. I think the singing is absolutely riveting...everyone is terrific. I love the set with the huge cracked bottles. Handel's music is gorgeous, and it's gorgeously played. So a very strong yes. ... Read More
Rating: - The Gospel According to St. Peter (Sellars)
Handel's Oratorio celebrates the steadfast faithfulness of the Christian Theodora in the face of Roman persecution. She won't worship Caesar's gods, by Jove. In Sellars' retelling, Caesar becomes the American ... Read More
Rating: - Buy It Quickly!
Browsing for something else, I noticed that this excellent DVD is available cheap in used copies! Buy it! Don't wait!
Theodora was not composed as an opera. Interestingly, Bill Christie's operatic staging ... Read More
Rating: - Exquisite Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
The oratorio Theodora would be interesting containing as it does some of the Handel's most fabulous arias. With Lorraine Hunt Lieberson playing Irene, the DVD is on another level. She is just perfection, the emotion and ... Read More
Rating: - In Honor of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
As somewhat of a purist - OK - elitist, I'm surprised to find I enjoyed almost every minute of this long performance, Sellars' stage gimmicks and all. Handel's glorious arias dominate, and the exceptional audio and video ... Read More
- The Gospel According to St. Peter (Sellars)
- Buy It Quickly!