‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a spears-and-sandals soap opera in a sentence. Thankfully, this really isn’t the premise of composer Sally Beamish and poet David Harsent’s new oratorio. Instead, the two authors pose a more interesting problem: is betrayal still betrayal when it’s divinely ordained, the price of salvation? A performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony this week celebrated the innocent joys of heaven; The Judas Passion invited us to count their sinful cost.
You see them before you hear them. The 30 pieces of silver catch the light as they hang suspended as part of the ‘Judas chime’, an instrument created especially for The Judas Passion. The sound is at once a warning jangle and a seductive shimmer of promise. It’s just one of several striking musical textures that punctuate Beamish’s new work. Jointly commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque, it takes the period orchestra of Bach’s passions as its toolbox, his musical structures as scaffolding, and constructs a contemporary work — a passion for our own age.
Three centuries on and the focus has shifted.
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