Paradise Lost

The biblical story of the creation of the first human pair; the temptation of Eve by Satan, who leads his following of fallen angels in the fight against heaven and God’s creation; the fall from grace and the expulsion from paradise, with which the never ending burden of war, fratricide, illness and death begins, but also the encouragement of the exiled pair through the words of the Archangel Michael, with which the work ends: „ Be strong in faith, in hope and love, which is stronger than all, then you will be able to leave paradise without anxiety and win paradise in yourselves“ - all of this is paraded by Christopher Fry, the librettist of Penderecki’s second opera, within the inner eye of the blind poet, John Milton.
Fry’s work is much more than simply a transformation and compilation of the 1665 completed monumental verse epos Paradise Lost by John Milton. Fry creates new accents, not just by calling up Milton himself as blind seer, but also in strengthening the figure of Eve, in contrast to Milton’s puri-tanical vision, and in the archangel Michael’s finale the emphasis on the power of love as the initiator of all hope. With the notation „Sacra Rappresentazione“ Penderecki suceeds deliberately in the tradition of the allegorical and biblical legends that were principally performed in the 15th and 16th century in Florence - an expression of his deeply rooted spiritually historical tradition, that has over the years be-come increasingly determinant for his compositorial creativity.