Handel made me cry

My favorite CD purchase of this past year may just be Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's recording of Handel arias conducted by Harry Bicket. This is some of the most moving singing I've heard in some time.

The motivation of the CD was apparently the Peter Sellars' production of Theodora at Glyndebourne, which I recently saw on DVD courtesy of NetFlix. This has been praised to the skies by the usual suspects and while I was very moved by this as well (it helps having such committed performers as Lieberson, Dawn Upshaw, David Daniels and Richard Croft, with William Christie in the pit), but as always I'm frustrated by Sellars' production. The interaction between the characters is some of the most emotional and true-to-life that I've seen on an opera stage. But yet again he feels the need to overlay this with pop/modern references and his own agenda and subtext. I'd love, just for once, to see him stage at least a semi-traditional performance of a Handel (or Mozart, or anything for that matter) opera. He is a man of undoubted talents, but personally I'd rather see him trust the works more, rather than try to reinvent them.