Michael Tanner

Bach wins through

St Matthew Passion - Glyndebourne<br />Rigoletto - Royal Opera House

issue 21 July 2007

Bach’s St Matthew Passion doesn’t seem an obvious ‘Glyndebourne opera’, except from the point of view of the non-Londoner having to use public transport to get there, who might well regard the whole outing as a penitential pilgrimage. At the third performance the atmosphere did seem unusually hushed. What we were offered was an almost entirely silent play within which a performance of Bach’s masterpiece took place. The idea, a notably bad one of the producer Katie Mitchell’s, is that in a school somewhere in Europe there has been a shooting, with many children, whose photographs we are shown, killed. Four travelling players come and console the mourners, enlisting the onlookers for the small parts in the Passion, and getting them all to sing the choruses and chorales. This much we are told in the programme, as well as that the story of Christ’s death is experienced through the spectators’ (on stage) own grief.

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