The closest J.S. Bach came to writing operas were his elaborate settings of the Passion narratives form the Christian Gospels. According to the Leipzig cantor's obituary, he composed five different Passions, but only two have survived. Bach left his personal music library to his composer-sons, and they were notoriously capricious with their patrimony.

Requiring a large cast of able vocal soloists, a chamber orchestra and proficient chorus, Bach's 1724 "Passion According to St. John" is both a dramatic reconstruction of the story of Jesus' arrest, trial and crucifixion, and a pious reflection on these events. To mark the first day of Holy Week on the Christian calendar, on Sunday (April 5) the First United Methodist Church of San Diego presented the "St. John Passion" in a concert that attempted to mediate the artistic and devotional potential of performing this Passion. All of the major choruses and arias were sung in the original German, but all of the narrative, dialogue, and chorales were sung in English.

My inner purist was skeptical about this compromise, but in fact it worked surprisingly well. Musicologists are not of a single mind that Bach's congregation sang along with every chorale (Bach liked to take a text from one hymn and splice it into a different, unexpected chorale melody, which would certainly catch the worshippers by surprise, for in this pre-Xerox era, parishioners were not given libretti!), but with the lavish printed program provided by the First Methodist Concert Series, it was rewarding to sing the chorales in parts and enter into the spirit of the Passion.

There is, however, good contemporary precedent for this bi-lingual approach: some American opera companies, when presenting a German operetta, translate the dialogue into English, but allow the arias and choruses to be sung in the original German that most opera fans know and love.

Under the strong direction of Stanley M. Wicks, First Methodist's Director of Church Music, this Passion moved with dispatch in the more dramatic sections and offered lyrical devotion in the more reflective moments. A compelling Passion requires an Evangelist of great musical and spiritual persuasion to narrate the events, and tenor Richard Geiler proved stellar in every respect. He projected a bright, clear, flexible tenor color that carried well in the large church without overwhelming the text, which he phrased with a most sensitive awareness of accent, stress, inner meaning.

The heart of the performance centered around Pilate's interrogation of Jesus, an event elaborated as a first-century court-room drama in John's Gospel for theological and political reasons. As the early Christian Church began to spread throughout the Roman Empire, it was in the church's interest to remove some of the responsibility of Jesus' execution from Roman authority, so in the latest of the four canonical Gospels, Pilate is made more equivocating and more sympathetic.

The intense interaction among baritone John Polhamus, who infused Pilate with rich authority and admirable breadth of tone, Christopher Stevens' stoical Jesus, the vocally ferocious chorus (in the role of the jeering crowd) and Geiler's sharp narration was thrilling and as close to opera-in-concert as churchly decorum might allow. Someday, however, I would like to hear a bass interpret the Jesus in this Passion in a less bland, stoic mode--some of the responses to Pilate's questioning are ironic, even arch, but popular piety sadly withholds these characteristics from Jesus' personna.

Members of the San Diego Symphony, with Symphony Concertmaster Jeff Thayer in the first chair, provided supple, well-balanced instrumental support. In the solo arias, oboes Betsy Spear and Mark Gordon and flutist Demarre McGill added the eloquent obbligato lines that set Bach's sacred music so far above his Baroque rivals. Organist Robert Plimpton found a laudable variety of colors from the grand First Methodist instrument to give either a gentle halo to the recitatives or a raucous jolt to abrasive choruses.

Mezzo-soprano Patricia McAfee and soprano Rebecca Basilio were more persuasive and touching in their valedictory arias, "Es ist vollbracht" and "Zerfliesse, mein Herze." But the Passion belonged to the Evangelist and the chorus, from the heaven-storming, rock solid opening "Herr, unser Herrscher" to the heart-wrenching "Ruht wohl" at the end.

PRESS PROGRAM HERE