Royal Castle in Warsaw
Józef Elsner
Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi
d-moll Op.65
soprano | Monika Buczkowska-Ward
mezzo-soprano | Gabriela Celińska
tenor | Łukasz Kózka
tenor | Jakub Pawlik
bass | Filip Rutkowski
Vocal Esemble of the Warsaw Chamber Opera
Head od the Vocal Esemble | Krzysztof Kusiel-Moroz
Period Instrument Orchestra of the Warsaw Chamber Opera
Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense (MACV)
Conductor | Gaetano d’Espinosa
“Passion” Op. 65 by Józef Elsner, more precisely Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi seu Triumphus Evangelii, is a monumental and thrilling work, regarded as one of the most outstanding contributions to 19th-century Polish oratorio literature. Elsner composed it over two years (1836–1837).
Originally, Elsner had intended it to be an opera, as early as 1830 he had conceived the idea of creating a grand work reflecting the Gospel narratives. However, the November Uprising thwarted these plans—any public performance would have been “blocked,” and approval for staging was impossible. For pragmatic reasons, Elsner turned his focus to sacred music, producing a remarkable body of work: thirty Masses, eighteen Offertories, and fifty-two other compositions, including seven cantatas, two Requiems, and the exhilarating Te Deum of 1825, in which, according to some sources, the organ part was played by Fryderyk Chopin himself. He composed these works alongside symphonic and operatic music—the latter of which he abandoned in 1830. Regardless of the scale of his output, Elsner’s name is most often remembered with the annotation: “…teacher, discoverer of Fryderyk Chopin’s talent, his later mentor and friend.”
At the end of 1834, Fr. Kasper Wittman, custodian of Warsaw Cathedral, persuaded Elsner to compose a work suitable for the liturgy of Holy Week. According to contemporaries, the priest had grown tired of performing only popular foreign works, particularly those by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Joseph Haydn, and Peter Winter.
As noted by Marcin Łukaszewski:
“Thus, from the combination of Elsner’s own intentions and Fr. Wittman’s proposal, without doubt emerged Józef Elsner’s most significant work and one of the finest oratorios in 19th-century Polish music.”
Passion Op. 65 enjoyed great success, performed in cities including St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and Warsaw. It was met with acclaim from both critics and audiences, impressing with its scope—sometimes requiring an ensemble of up to four hundred performers. For many decades, the work was lost; it was rediscovered in Berlin in 1994 by Krzysztof Rottermund, and restored to the concert and recording repertoire by the Warsaw Chamber Opera on the 160th anniversary of its premiere—precisely in the same location where it was first performed: the Evangelical-Augsburg Holy Trinity Church at Małachowskiego Square in Warsaw.
This time, it will be performed in the majestic halls of the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Palm Sunday, symbolically introducing listeners to the mysteries of Holy Week. The performance on period instruments, in the spirit of historically informed interpretation, will restore the work’s sound as it would have been heard two centuries ago.