Gli Angeli Genève

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Leonardo García Alarcón conductor
Sophie Junker soprano
Marianne Beate Kielland alto
Matthew Newlin tenor
Stephan MacLeod bass

Felix Mendelssohn
Paulus

Paulus is the first of Mendelssohn’s two great oratorios. Created ten years before Elias, its genesis was long and complex. To librettists for whom the oratorio could only follow the English form, Mendelssohn opposed an unalterable desire to bring his work closer to Bach’s Passions, by introducing numerous chorales, for example. He won his case, but nothing was simple and more than five years separated the commissioning of the work from its premiere. What could be more logical for Mendelssohn, grandson of a philosophical and avant-garde rabbi and son of a prosperous Jewish banker who converted his family to Lutheranism, than to focus on the destiny of Saint Paul, the Jewish-born apostle who first persecuted the disciples of Jesus before a mystical encounter with the risen Christ that changed his life and the early history of Christianity?
After the late Michel Corboz in 2021, after Kristian Bezuidenhout in 2022, after Philippe Herreweghe in 2023, it is Leonardo García Alarcón who we are handing the reins of this flagship concert of our festival. A long-standing friend and an immense musician who needs no introduction, he will illuminate this emblematic evening of our 23-24 season with his extraordinary musicality and his immense pleasure in making music.