Bach Charlotte: Handel's Theodora
Sat, Jun 06
|Sandra Levine Theatre
Ian Watson leads Handel’s most profound and affecting creation. A powerful drama of courage, faith, and moral resolve, Theodora unfolds through radiant arias and stirring choruses of extraordinary emotional force.
Time & Location
Jun 06, 2026, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Sandra Levine Theatre, 2319 Wellesley Ave, Charlotte, NC 28274, USA
About the event
Theodora (HWV 68) is a dramatic oratorio (first performed in 1750) in three acts by George Frideric Handel. Other than Messiah, it is his only oratorio to be based on a Christian subject. But where Messiah is triumphant and expansive, Theodora is tragic and intimate, dealing with religious devotion and human nobility on a highly personal level.
Theodora tells the story of Theodora and Didymus, Christian saints who were martyred in the early fourth century. A young noblewoman under the rule of the emperor Diocletian, Theodora refuses to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods. Didymus, a Roman soldier who has secretly converted to Christianity, risks his life to help her—and ultimately shares in her martyrdom. Librettist Thomas Morell based his story on an early novella (1687) by Robert Boyle, The Martyrdom of Theodora and of Didymus and also borrowed elements from an earlier tragic play on the same subject.
Theodora was not initially…