Julia Bullock in Theodora
(Picture: Camilla Greenwell)Katie Mitchell’s new production of Handel’s Theodora comes bristling with warnings of sexual violence and exploitation. It was also recently revealed that the production team had availed themselves of an “intimacy coordinator” to help negotiate the more intrusive moments. Handel’s work, to a libretto by Thomas Morrell, tells the story of the Christian martyr Theodora, threatened with the horrors of a Roman brothel for failing to renounce her religion. A fate worse than death, she opines, a view which allows her to submit to her ultimate death sentence with equanimity.
In Mitchell’s avowedly feminist reworking of the plot, the 4th-century governor of Antioch, Valens, becomes a Roman ambassador in a modern setting. Theodora and her devoted friend Irene, employed as kitchen staff in his household, are members of a fundamentalist religious sect plotting to destroy the embassy.
