A passion for a Passion

Does one ever fully recover from the emotion of theatrical performance? I cross-refer in this to Anna MR's blog entry on roles of theatre past.

In my 'current past' case, it was 18 years ago today, on 24 November 1988, at the Warwick Arts Centre, that we had the opening night of our university stage production of JS Bach's St John Passion in English. The performance was touted as the British stage première, being most often done as a concert piece in German. It was a semi-professional gig, as most of the soloists were fully fledged professionals on the opera and concert circuit. I was part of the dramatic chorus, a tight-knit group who wove choral harmonies into the action.

The show was a personal first in two other ways. It was the first theatre piece that I was in that was reviewed, and positively, in a national newspaper (The Sunday Telegraph, if I recall). It was also the first time on stage, in dress rehearsal, that I found myself with real tears flowing.

Back in the present, I have just this week, courtesy of Amazon, taken delivery of a CD of a recording of a different English language version. I have not listened to this music for many years, but had not heard three bars of Part 1 before remembering my tears at the end of the crucifixion scene ("It is finished"), and realising that the performance was still in me. Somewhere. An echo in time maybe, but very, very real.