David Dalle
Thursday March 28th, 2024 with David Dalle
Passion music with Kaija Saariaho La Passion de Simone and more.

For my annual show before Good Friday, I draw upon the incredibly rich tradition of music for and inspired by the Passion story, as well as unexpected music which I find fits the theme. This year we will have one of the more unusual choices, "La Passion de Simone", the 2006 oratorio for soprano, choir, orchestra, and electronics, by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. This work is not about Christ, but is composed in the tradition of Passion music. She composed this oratorio about the French philosopher, activist, and mystic Simone Weil. Producer Peter Sellars suggested the subject, while Saariaho had been reading Weil's writings since her youth. The libretto by French author Amin Maalouf brought together the different strands of Simone Weil's short life, which were the focus of the three creative minds behind the Oratorio. Saariaho was "fascinated by Simone's striving for abstract (mathematical) and spiritual-intellectual goals, Peter [was] interested in her social awareness and political activities. Amin brought out the gaping discrepancy between her philosophy and her life, showing the fate of the frail human being amongst great ideas." Saariaho structured the work in 15 Stations, echoing the Passion tradition of the Stations of the Cross. Simone Weil believed strongly in a sense of self-sacrifice, and in seeking redemption in suffering. She did not care about her own well-being, but in understanding and being attentive to the suffering of others. She travelled to Germany in 1932 to understand the rise of Nazism, and she worked in Paris factories in the lowest positions as an unskilled female labourer to understand the normalization of brutality in modern industry. She wrote against French colonialism in Africa and Southeast Asia. She obtained journalist credentials and joined an international brigade in the Spanish Civil War, where she was injured. Only at the insistence of her parents did she not return to combat. After the Nazi conquest of France in 1940 she wanted to stay in France, despite her Jewish background, and fight in the resistance. She was refused due to her poor health. She left France for the US only because her parents would not leave France without her. She ended up in London in 1943 where she had hopes of joining the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as a radio operator infiltrating France. Her poor health prevented this again. In solidarity, she limited herself to the same inadequate food rations that most French were limited to in occupied France. This only worsened her precarious health and she died in August 1943, only 34 years old. During all this time, she wrote prodigiously on many subjects. In Amin Maalouf's libretto, the comparison with Christ is strongly implied, such as in the Fourteenth Station, where the soloist sings "It was in August forty-three, Mankind didn't know/That a woman sacrificed herself for them/For their lies, their betrayals, their brutality".