I watched this production from the temporary home of the Theater an der Wien with a mixture of bafflement and outrage, tempered by enjoyment of the musical performance. This late work, the only one of Handel’s oratorios on a Christian subject (other than the atypical Messiah) has recently become well known, thanks largely to the production at Glyndebourne in 1996. It is set in Antioch during the reign of Diocletian. Valens, the Roman governor, orders the populace to celebrate the emperor’s birthday by making a sacrifice to Jove, on pain of ‘chastisement or death’. Theodora, a Christian, refuses: she is imprisoned and eventually condemned to death along with Didymus, a Roman officer who loves her and whom she has converted. The chorus takes the part variously – never in combination – of Christians and Heathens. It is a noble story, unbearably moving in the Glyndebourne production, where the lovers (not really a suitable term) are executed by lethal injection.

Stefan Herheim’s production is likewise in modern dress. The unvarying setting is the Café Central in Vienna; Silke Bauer’s recreation doesn’t show the papier mâché statue of the poet Peter Altenberg by the entrance. There are chairs and tables, including a billiard table; cake stands, and newspapers on wooden frames. Valens is the head waiter and the other four characters – including Septimius, friend of Didymus, and Irene, Theodora’s fellow Christian, comprise his staff. With no justification, Didymus seems to be attracted to Septimius, while Valens, with his wolfish smile, is definitely attracted to both officers. I mentioned bafflement and outrage. Valens is generally authoritarian, as the text requires; but during the contrapuntal chorus ‘All pow’r in Heav’n above’ he is jostled, then stripped to his underpants. In fact there is a lot of stripping, albeit not in a salacious way. Off come jacket, blouse and skirt in Theodora’s ‘Fond, flatt’ring world, adieu!’ And in the exquisite ‘As with rosy steps the morn’, Irene sheds blouse and skirt in the B section, followed by the chorus in the da capo. As for outrage: at the beginning of Part 3 (which follows Part 2 without a break), Irene distributes cakes while singing ‘Lord, to Thee each night and day’; the chorus inexplicably bursts out laughing and does so again at ‘Heav’n has heard your pray’rs for Theodora’. At the end, Didymus and Theodora are not executed: dismissed by Valens, they leave together with their holdalls but separate outside the café, while a winged angel appears on the roof.

Cuts include the duet ‘Whither, Princess, do you fly?’ and Irene’s ‘New scenes of joy’; and the first scene of Part 2, where Valens is carousing with the Heathens, is interpolated into Part 1. The Arnold Schoenberg Chor and Dresden-based La Folia Barockorchester sing and play exuberantly for countertenor-turned-conductor Bejun Mehta. Some of the cadenzas are OTT, and the violins’ rubato in ‘Fond, flatt’ring world’ is exaggerated, as is their staccato in ‘The pilgrim’s home’; but otherwise Mehta’s conducting is unexceptionable. The solo performers are uniformly excellent. All are from the US apart from Julie Boulianne, who is Canadian. Jacquelyn Wagner delivers Theodora’s airs with firm, even tone, well matched by the effortless countertenor of Chistopher Lowrey’s Didymus. As Septimius, David Portillo is particularly impressive in the semiquaver runs of ‘Dread the fruits of Christian folly’; so too is Evan Hughes as the unspeakable Valens in ‘Cease, ye slaves, your fruitless pray’r’. The tiny, bespectacled figure of Julie Boulianne sings so touchingly as to make you feel that Irene must have been Handel’s favourite. All cope manfully with the indignities visited on them by Herheim.

The video direction by Götz Filenius is fine; the one drawback is that there are too many long-distance shots, making it difficult sometimes to identify the singer. I cannot recommend this misconceived production. Turn instead to the uplifting performance from Glyndebourne, conducted by William Christie and directed by Peter Sellars.