Messiah HWV 56 by Händel, št 17 apr 2014, Od (2014/2014), Režírované Claus Guth, Dirigent Christophe Rousset, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria

In the Handel year 2009, together with his co-authors, Claus Guth looked for situations in which the theme of the oratorio could be experienced in a different way than in a performance in a concert hall for his scenic implementation of the Messiah . A group of people is confronted by painful experiences with the big questions of being human: What is guilt? What does love mean What does death mean? What's next? How should one deal with the loss of a loved one? What is redemption? Handel's Messiah, first performed in Dublin in 1742, is based on scriptures compiled by Charles Jennens. The libretto is abstract; In contrast to Bach's Passions or the Christmas Oratorio, it does not tell a story. The Messiah does not appear. Statements of the prophets in the Old Testament are interpreted Christologically and refer to Jesus as the New Testament describes him. He is portrayed as the expected savior. The basic gesture of the texts is the struggle for faith. Handel's music turns it into a large painting of the “condition humaine” and finds overwhelming expression for human fears and hopes, feelings of guilt, contrition and exultant certainty of redemption. A funeral, a baptism, a love story, a suicide, indictments and self-reproaches - realistically shown scenes are used to compose fragments of biographies that can be read as a kind of family story. A second level is created by the choir, which, through its formalized gestures, has a tense relationship with the protagonists' play. A sign soloist and a dancer open up additional levels of expression. The theological vanishing point of the Messiah , the Christian message, is thus tied back to existential experiences from which the work begins to speak anew. After four years, the successful performance returns to the Theater an der Wien with partly new cast under the direction of Christophe Rousset.