Perhaps we ought to consider the piece in its context.

The first performance (in a concert version) was 1927, its first staging the following year. Operas appearing within a couple of years of those dates include Wozzeck and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (1925), Turandot, The Makropoulos Affair and Cardillac (1926), Schwanda the Bagpiper (1927), Die Aegyptische Helena (1928) Sir John in Love (1929) and From the House of the Dead (1930). This might help to emphasize just how different it was from what was happening around it; Stravinsky was totally unaffected by the Berg work which is to become a seminal force thereafter, particularly to Shostakovich and Britten: everything else there shows traditional opera traits, with the possible exception of the Ravel (at least as far as staging requirements). This is a composer who is refusing to accept the status quo, looking instead for new forms of expression. Perhaps only when we view it alongside its contemporaries can we begin to see just how innovative this opera really is.

The composer's grandson, Marius Stravinsky, is also a conductor... a pupil of Vladimir Ponkin, and he has taken-over some performances from his pedagogue at Helikon Opera in Moscow recently... very competently, I might add.

But is it an opera?
It's more like a staged oratorio in my mind.
Stravinsky sees with hallucinogenic clarity what an oratorio could be...

Well I suppose in Handel's London, an oratorio was simply an unstaged opera, but as a genre I think that it gained independence and that composers (possibly through the rediscovery of the Baroque in the 19th century?) generally sought to emphasise the realistic and dramatic aspects of opera, while in oratorio it is the reflective and the static that were emphasised. Stravinsky seems to be attempting some kind of conjuring trick - while he keeps the past at arm's length, he shows us that this established art-form is closer to ideas of ancient Greek theatre than we imagined (is there also a Brechtian influence here? I seem to remember Max Paddison saying something about this in my second year...)

I'd never have thought it was possible for me to bring Reiner to tears but I seem to have managed it...

Oh well, it does it for me. I think I may be more of a Handel fan than Reiner is though? Reiner, if you like I'll buy it from you and give it a good home. Can't say fairer than that.

Handel's first oratorios seem to have been in Italy, for performance at times of the year (e.g. Lent, I think) when operas weren't allowed to be put on. And indeed some were basically surrogate operas - but without certain drama-killing conventions such as characters having to leave the stage after their arias (a convention Handel uses so gorgeously in Tamerlano, but that's another story).

Oedipus Rex is called an 'opera-oratorio' in the score and indeed in the narrative.

Hasn't it been done in fact? I have some vague memory to that effect.

There's No business like Sho business. Just wanted to say that.

Prometeo is indeed subtitled 'tragedia dell'ascolto', as Richard of course knows but others might not.

Psst, hh:

Oh, I like Handel a great deal, I listen to him with great enthusiasm and rather frequently (and occasionally perform and stage stuff).  But I just couldn't find the "maguffin" in THEODORA, despite some pretty music in it..  it's not a stage piece by nature, and there are some awful hiatuses in the action.  I couldn't really believe at all in Theodora's charismatic cultists, and that was my main problem with the production...  I had no sympathy for them at all  Neither, though, are the baddies very bad... they are rather like panto villains, who just revel in being very naughty but have no credible advantage from being so. The persecution of Theodora's cult doesn't ring true... WHY do they want to persecute them?  (something more could have been made of that in the libretto, the "fear of the other", or a religion which threatens the rule of an earthly monarch... but these themes aren't developed in the drama).  The ending is clever, certainly, and it makes for a haunting picture at the final curtain (good rule of thumb to observe generally).  I think the production has tried very hard to prise a drama out of something that well, isn't one.  A good show ought to have "something to say", some more substantial moral conclusion which runs deeper than its subject matter...  THEODORA isn't much more than the sum of its parts, though.

Turning to OEDIPUS R however, there is lots of drama in there! And double-layered parallel - "the assassin of the King is a King" in parallel with "the cure for the Plague has itself brought a Plague".  And despite the tendency towards "oratorio" there are some moments of intense emotion - not least Jocasta's horror at the realisation of the identity of her lover.  The interplay of heavenly powers with earthly realities is another theme that could be brought out...  we sit back and calmly accept as "fact" stories about the Golden Apple setting the Trojan War in motion...  or the Oracle speaking truth, or Creon...  but suppose there ARE no "gods"?  Suppose it's all a heap of hokum invented to justify the otherwise-unacceptable behaviour of men??  This has been a theme in opera since the earliest days of the form...  CORONATION OF POPPEA begins with a Prologue in which Goddesses sport over the fate of Men...  but, ummm, in staunchly Roman-Catholic Italy do we really believe in Greek Gods?  Aren't they just a salve to the consciences of sinners?  Are the "gods" directing Oedipus... or is he just a sword-happy bed-hopping hooligan?   Anyhow, plenty of material in there for at least three different productions of the piece

Ta for the offer, but THEODORA is very well-sung and well-played, and I'll hang onto the disk for the sound, at least

PS Ollie, what were you going to say about the use of the exit-aria convention in TAMERLANO?  It's a piece that's absorbing a lot of my interest currently, so all input gratefully received...