Ambitious project announced

Artistic Director of Northern Aldborough Festival, Robert Ogden. Picture Lorne Campbell

The composer’s penultimate oratorio tells the tragic tale of noblewoman, Theodora, and Didymus - the Roman soldier who sacrificed his life in support of her.

Robert Ogden, Artistic Director of Northern Aldborough Festival, said Theodora’s tale echoes today.

“It’s a harrowing story that can be found in the fates of so many in the world’s fundamentalist regimes and autocracies, where alternative beliefs or practices are censured or eradicated through legal threats or force.

Soprano Fflur Wyn, who plays Theodora, the eponymous heroine in Handel’s tragic tale of two Christian lovers. Picture Lorne Campbell.

“One can also perceive a subtler but growing strain of fundamentalism in many democratic countries, where political or cultural norms are locked in and alternative viewpoints discouraged, through ‘cancellation’ or ‘trolling’.

“Theodora’s story belongs to us all, and her fears are shared by oppressed peoples everywhere.”

Under the tyranny of Roman emperor Diocletian, Theodora - a Christian - refuses to take part in a pagan ritual in his honour and is thrown into prison, where she is sentenced to serve as a temple prostitute, a fate she considers worse than death.

Didymus pledges to save her. He switches clothes with Theodora and takes her place in the prison cell. Their plan is discovered, and the two virtuous Christians are sentenced to death. They enter blissful immortality together.

The Northern Aldborough Festival’s innovative semi-staged production offers a rare opportunity for rural audiences in Yorkshire to experience an international world-class line-up of soloists, chorus and orchestra, under the baton of Baroque specialist, Julian Perkins.

The 40-strong production will be hosted in St Andrew’s Church in the rural village in North Yorkshire, which began as a Romano-British town; Aldborough is renowned for its Roman remains and sizeable Roman mosaics.

Robert, who saw the seminal Glyndbourne production of Theodora as a postgraduate opera student in 1996, has hopes to tour the production as part of the festival’s charitable mission to bring exceptional music from world-class performers to rural locations.

Tickets go on sale in April.