Stone Nest; Wigmore Hall; Royal Opera House, London
Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is reimagined for the stage; the South African soprano scales the heights from Strauss to The Sound of Music; and Asmik Grigorian is a shattering Butterfly
The virgin of sorrows weeping at the cross, described in a few plain words in the Bible, remains one of the most potent images in Christianity, invested with emotion by artists across centuries. Composers have found inspiration in the medieval text Stabat Mater; some 250 settings exist, more than two dozen from the past decade alone (all listed by stabatmater.info, which reasonably calls itself “the ultimate Stabat Mater website”). Among the best known is that by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, from 1736. At Stone Nest, the former church and one-time nightclub in Soho, London, the group Figure gave this version a staged reimagining, called Our Mother.
Conducted from the organ by its creative producer, Frederick Waxman, the vocal parts were distributed between five singers instead of the usual soprano and alto. New connecting music by Alex Mills, sympathetic to the original but distinctively his own, deftly played by the small string ensemble, expanded the evening to an hour-long show. The audience stood around a cross-shaped stage, which created a sense of witness.
