Bach's St. John Passion with texts of the Nazi resistance

The Dresden Boys' Choir, together with musicians from the Staatskapelle and actors, will offer an unusual performance of Bach's "St. John Passion". Next Saturday (June 13) in Dresden Cathedral, the Passion story will be combined with texts from the trial of resistance fighters Alfred Delp and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke at the People's Court, the boys' choir announced.

The Jesuit Delp had been involved in the Kreisau Circle, the group around von Moltke that planned a new beginning for Germany after the fall of Hitler. They had to stand trial in January 1945 and were executed shortly afterwards in Berlin-Plötzensee.

Passion story takes on a touching topicality

"It is a risk to combine Bach's masterful St. John Passion with staged readings that focus on one of the darkest episodes in German history. But in combination with original texts from the trial of the resistance fighters before the People's Court in 1945, the 2000-year-old Passion story and Bach's setting of it take on a frightening and at the same time touching topicality," it said.

Performance shows parallels between the two events

Till Krabbe, actor and former professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, had compiled the original documents from the People's Court together with Jesuit priest Klaus Mertes for this project and incorporated them into Bach's Passion setting. Many parallels emerged during the concert - for example between the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and Nazi criminal judge Roland Freisler. Or when Jesus' farewell words on the cross are juxtaposed with Delp's farewell letter to his mother, according to the announcement.

"The St. John Passion retains its musical brilliance and religious intimacy; its texts, with their now often strange Passion mysticism, speak directly through the testimonies of the last century and are moving," wrote theologian Gotthard Fuchs after the premiere of this play in 2016.