Johann Sebastian Bach – Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: MÁTÉ-PASSIÓ

Oratory in two parts, in German, with English, German and Hungarian subtitles

Length of the performance: 2 hours 45 minutes, with 1 break.

"God forbid! I feel like I'm sitting at an opera performance!" - these are the words of an elderly Leipzig bourgeois woman who, according to contemporary records, commented on the St. Matthew Passion, which was probably first performed on Good Friday 1727. The audience, of course, does not share the conservative lady's former dismissive judgement in the least, and indeed the listener feels and experiences Johann Sebastian Bach's Second Passion, the monumental story of the suffering of the innocent Lamb of God, in all its dramatic glory.

The work, composed for two choirs and two orchestras, was revived in the Baroque period after its first performances by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1829, and became one of the most sacred masterpieces of music in the 19th century. In the past decades, Bach research and the early music movement have brought us even closer to the St. Matthew Passion, and our admiration has only grown with this new understanding. OPERA performed the Mendelssohn transcription for the first time in Hungary during Holy Week 2013, and has continued to do so ever since, also promising a formative visual experience, according to the vision of Oscar-nominated animation director Géza M. Tóth.

The original publisher of the oratorio - Publisher: Bärenreiter Verlag / Urtext Edition - Bärenreiter Praha s.r.o.