Theodora Bruns

George Frideric Handel - Theodora [BluRay Untouched]
Ivor Bolton / Freiburger Barockorchester / Salzburger Bachchor
MPEG-4 AVC, 1080p, 1.78:1 | DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, LPCM 2.0 @ 24Bit/48kHz
Label/Cat#: Unitel Classica # 705804 | Country/Year: Europe 2011 | Size: 46,72 GB | 5% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Opera, HiDef

The cast is wonderfully voiced, and the orchestra and chorus sound marvelous, and really that's all that matters in the long run. Not that many people are all that familiar with Theodora, despite Sellars' sensational production of a few years ago, and hopefully this new Blu-ray can help bring this beautiful piece to a wider audience. Highly recommended.

George Frideric Handel - Theodora [HiRes FLAC]
Ivor Bolton / Freiburger Barockorchester / Salzburger Bachchor
LPCM 2.0 @ 24Bit/48kHz ripped to FLAC | Size: 1,50 GB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Unitel Classica # 705804 | Country/Year: Europe 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Opera, HiDef

The cast is wonderfully voiced, and the orchestra and chorus sound marvelous, and really that's all that matters in the long run. Not that many people are all that familiar with Theodora, despite Sellars' sensational production of a few years ago, and hopefully this new Blu-ray can help bring this beautiful piece to a wider audience. Highly recommended.

Paul McCreesh is one of the better-known figures in London's active early music scene, particularly as a conductor of small ensemble music of the Baroque. He grew up playing the cello. While at Manchester University, he formed a student chamber choir and ensemble of period instruments. In 1982 he organized it formally as the Gabrieli Consort and Players. .

Here for the first time on CD is Glyndebourne's acclaimed 1996 production of Handel's oratorio Theodora. Although Theodora is a story of a virtuous woman and sexual persecution, this has not proved to be an obstacle to its enduring success, the subject a deeply touching one, resonating from the age of antiquity to the present day. The recording is the debut on the Glyndebourne label for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, one of Glyndebourne's two resident orchestras. This audio release, in no way detracting from the extraordinary Peter Sellar's production, allows the focus to be on the soloists, conductor and orchestra. This recording confirms Lorraine Hunt as a true Handelian, capturing the spirit of Irene as few others could. In counter-tenor David Daniels as Didymus, there is a breadth of range drawing the listener away from the oft strained and forced falsetto sound.

The recent Glyndbourne staging of this oratorio demonstrated how well it worked as an opera, and this recording by Nicholas McGegan creates a similar dramatic intensity out of the tragic story of oppression and resistance. He finds excellent tempi for the arias, and keeps the recitatives cracking along at a good pace. And though he has a very good ensemble team of soloists, the star of the show is definitely soprano Lorraine Hunt (who, interestingly enough, sang the mezzo role of Irene for Glyndebourne) as Theodora. She uses the rich, throaty quality of her voice to bring out all the terrible pathos of Theodora's plight, while still suggesting that she is a character lit by an inner fire of joy. Unfortunately the acoustic lacks a certain bloom, and this makes the sound world sometimes seem a little flat and dry.

It is remarkable that Theodora, this gem of an Oratorio, whose musical quality Handel himself considered to be particularly outstanding, seems to be largely unknown to professional musicians and the expert audience. This is even more astonishing as this masterpiece (in the versions of its first performance lasting nearly three hours) is definitely an absolute highlight of Handel’s creative work, not least because of its splendidly differentiated orchestration and the psychologically sensitive presentation of its protagonists.

George Frideric Handel - Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra / Nicholas McGegan - Theodora HWV 68 (Repost)
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC+ART: 1,4 GB | MP3 CBR 320: 420 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info + rev-Part
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Mundi HMU 907060.62 | Country/Year: Europe 1992 | Genre: Classical | Style: Oratorio

Theodora (HWV 68) is an oratorio in three acts by George Frideric Handel, set to an English libretto by Thomas Morell. The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus. Handel wrote Theodora during his last period of composition, his Indian summer. He was sixty-four years old when he began working on it in June 1749. He had written the oratorios Solomon and Susanna the previous year. Theodora would be his second-to-last oratorio…