In 2010, stage director Peter Sellars and the Berlin Philharmonic enacted Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Berliner Philharmoniker 2010; McClary 2019: 163–191). This composition from the 1720s was written for the Lutheran Good Friday service. It interpolates Matthew’s gospel account with chorales, arias, and dialogic parts that reflect on the narrative (Berger 2007: 102–117).

In Bach’s work an alto voice, here sung by Magdalena Kožená, reacts to the Crucifixion. However, unable to come to terms with Jesus’s suffering, the music breaks off. In this moment of utter despair and confusion, the voice suddenly takes comfort in the sight of the crucified. In delight and with a long melisma, she exclaims: ‘Sehet’, ‘See, Jesus stretches out his hands to embrace us!’.

Sellars crafts a simple set for Bach’s composition. Everyone on stage is dressed in black. In the dimmed light of Hans Scharoun’s iconic concert hall, this puts particular emphasis on the hands and faces such that the singers’ gestures attain central attention. Combining their carefully arranged bodily movements with those of the instrumentalists, Sellars interweaves the words and music of Bach’s work with a nuanced visual account of the Passion.

Kožená, on the ‘Sehet’, spreads out her arms. In this gesture she merges a bodily expression of joy with the very cruciform posture she is urging everyone in the concert hall to behold. The choristers in front of her, however, cannot understand this exalted visual evocation of Jesus on the Cross. They remain crestfallen and only answer ‘whither?’ to Kožená’s calls to ‘seek redemption’ and ‘take mercy … in Jesus’s arms’.

In reaction, she calls the paralyzed choir a group of ‘abandoned chicks’. These words by librettist Picander build on Protestant preaching (Axmacher 1984: 79–82, 179–180; Marquard 2020: 92–97; Steiger 2002: 73–75, 155–58). Usually articulated quite softly by other singers, Kožená exploits the full vocative potential of the rising line in which Bach sets this verse. Thus enforced, her urges to reconsider the Crucifixion visually culminate in a pointed gesture: on the word ‘chicks’, she bumps the shoulder of one of the choristers (Berliner Philharmoniker 2013: 1:16:25) so as to open their eyes to the benevolent invitation of their mother hen on the cross.

References

Axmacher, Elke. 1984. ‘Aus Liebe will mein Heyland sterben’: Untersuchungen zum Wandel des Passionsverständnisses im frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Neuhausen: Hänssler)

Berger, Karol. 2007. Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Berliner Philharmoniker. 2010. Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’ with Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars (https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/318).

______. 2013. Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’ with Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars (https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/16913)

Marquard, Reiner. 2020. ‘“Das gehet meiner Seele nah”: Biblisch-theologische Erschließung des Librettos’, in Johann Sebastian Bach Matthäus-Passion, ed. by Reiner Marquard and Walter Meinrad (Stuttgart: Carus-Verlag), pp. 55–104

McClary, Susan. 2019. The Passions of Peter Sellars: Staging the Music (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)

Steiger, Renate. 2002. Gnadengegenwart: Johann Sebastian Bach im Kontext lutherischer Orthodoxie und Frömmigkeit (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog)