The Gospel according to the other Mary: a passion oratorio in two acts (Gustavo Dudamel) (2014)

"This 'passion oratorio' is designed by John Adams and his librettist/director Peter Sellars as a companion piece to El Niño (2000), their nativity oratorio. Like that work (and, arguably, Adams' operas The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic), The Other Mary hovers somewhere between opera and concert work. Like El Niño too, the text is a patchwork of extracts from both old and new testaments, Hildegard of Bingen, and a variety of 20th-century writers, ranging from Primo Levi to June Jordan. The Other Mary is, Sellars has said, an attempt to 'set the passion story in the eternal present, in the tradition of sacred art', so the narrative constantly merges the biblical past and the world today. The story unfolds from the point of view of Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha and brother Lazarus, who seem to commute between the two time frames, and so create parallels between the story of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and real 20th- and 21st-century events." (The Guardian; volg link voor recensietekst)