As much as I would like to continue sharing photographs of this beautiful time of year from the mountains around Utah Valley, I didn’t get out this week. Sometimes my regular job gets in the way of having fun. I spent almost every night this week in the theatre and even a very long day on Saturday. I lit the opera, Theodora for the BYU School of Music.

Theodora was not exactly written to be staged as a dramatic work. It’s more of an oratorio, much like The Messiah. It’s an interesting story and there are dramatic elements, but the presentation is mostly based on choral work and not so much visual storytelling. Theodora is the story of a Christian convert during Roman times. She is persecuted for her beliefs, jailed, threatened with rape, and eventually killed. In the process of her trials, she is befriended by a Roman soldier, Didymus, who attempts to save her life by exchanging clothes with her to facilitate her escape from prison. However, the attempt fails and Didymus is killed alongside Theodora. Although the story has a tragic ending, there are elements of courage, atonement, redemption, forgiveness, love, sacrifice, and honor.

The music is beautiful and the story is rich in emotion. The only downside of the presentation is a tendency to seem a bit static. Our director chose to stage the opera in a mix between Roman influence and post-apocalyptic times. I kept the lighting stark, a bit cold and harsh in the scenes with the Romans and heathens. And then slightly warmer in scenes involving the Christians. I shot these images at ISO 6400, keeping my aperture low (2.8-4.0), and a shutter speed between 1/500 and 1/1000 most of the time to freeze the action. My white balance was set at 3250.