After the enthusiastic reviews from the press who attended the premiere two years ago during the pandemic, the audience is also responding positively. Comments such as ‘A beautiful evening! I was deeply moved many times!’ and ‘…shining with joy and dedication… Bravo and my deep bow…’ are just a few of the positive audience reactions to the performance.<\/p>\n
One of the most touching responses was from a 12-year-old daughter of an attendee. She found the performance amazing and asked when she could go to the opera again: ‘My friend and her 12-year-old daughter were in the audience yesterday, it was the kid’s first-ever opera, and she loved it and is asking when they can go again.’<\/p>\n
On 22 May, J.S. Bach – The Apocalypse<\/em> played in the Great Hall of Theatre M\u00fcnster during the Bachfest M\u00fcnster, where the performance had its German premiere. The German audience applauded for minutes afterwards, and reviewers also wrote positively about the performance. According to Concerti.de, the audience saw a ‘pasticcio with intelligently and sensitively adapted compositions by Thomaskantor Bach’, resulting in a ‘fascinating night at the theatre’: ‘”The Apocalypse” impresses […] as a planned big hit’.<\/p>\n ‘[…] the Anabaptist story is told in a catchy and gripping way, the combination with the music, which is both sacred and dramatic, works’,\u00a0writes the M\u00fcnstersche Zeitung, with director Serge van Veggel proving that\u00a0‘modern opera can also work excellently with “old” music’ and ‘the period instruments under Hern\u00e1n Schvartzman deliver everything that the baroque theory of affects has to offer’.<\/p>\n In Leipzig too, the performance was cheered by audiences. The Leipziger Volkszeitung praised musicality of the performance:\u00a0‘Musically, the production also comes off as one piece: Hern\u00e1n Schvartzman and the orchestra of the Dutch Bach Society really do get a lot of drama out of the Bach movements that Iliopoulos has compiled between the two Cum Sancto fugues from the Mass in B minor, which “frame” this “apocalypse”.’<\/p>\n The opera tells the true story of Jan van Leiden. This actor, pub landlord and tailor became leader of a movement in the 16th century that proclaimed that the world would fall. A salvation state was established. This radicalised and became a dictatorship. We follow John from his initial enthusiasm, through his equally flamboyant and ruthless reign to his final confession on death row. We thus experience from the inside how the timeless mechanisms of populism, polarisation and radicalisation do their work.<\/p>\n With gripping, overwhelming and emotional music by Bach, the story comes to life. Scenarist and director Serge van Veggel, together with librettist Thomas H\u00f6ft and baroque specialist and modern composer Panos Iliopoulos, turned the work into a true through-composed opera. Thanks to a compelling and grandiose staging, an outstanding cast and the choir and orchestra of the Nederlandse Bachvereniging conducted by Hern\u00e1n Schvartzman, Bach will be heard and seen as never before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Audience and press positive After the enthusiastic reviews from the press who attended the premiere two years ago during the pandemic, the audience is also responding positively. Comments such as ‘A beautiful evening! I was deeply moved many times!’ and ‘…shining with joy and dedication… Bravo and my deep bow…’ are just a few of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJan van Leiden<\/h3>\n
Bach as never before<\/h3>\n