Stabat Mater

19–21 August 2004
Opera Theatre Company
Valentia Island, County Kerry

There is a cave on Valentia Island in County Kerry that was used as a slate quarry in the 19th century, and as a grotto to the Virgin Mary in the 1950’s.

The vast cave, with wonderful acoustics, was a perfect amphitheatre. Stabat Mater is essentially a prayer, a yearning and a pledge. It is sung by two evangelists as they stand below the dead Christ on the cross.  

Production notes: August 2005

The performances will happen just before dusk on three evenings. A trumpet player will play fragments of music from the back of the cave …echoes of Pergolesi …a repetitive ‘heraldic’ sound. The audience will stand behind the railings as church-goers did at pilgrim masses. Singers and players will emerge from the darkness of the cave walking past giant saws and machines dressed in dirty work overalls, as if coming off a shift.  The baroque players will unwrap their instruments from blankets and tarps and begin to play. At first the singers will sound bored and soulless, almost routine. Then a  frenzy of evangelistic valor will build as if they have remembered passion and prayer and the pure beauty of the music. When the music ends the singers will return to the interior of the cave. A large screen will slowly roll on a track to the front of  the the cave .Very loud industrial sound will blast out, obliterating the memory of the beauty of the music.  Images will appear on the screen of man and machine , water pumps and trucks, hammers and screeching stone-cutters on the quarry floor – then moving above to the cliff face where the moss-covered Virgin Mary stands in a crevasse.