With the first recording of Georg Anton Kreusser’s Passion oratorio “The Death of Jesus”, the Mainz Cathedral Choir of St Martin and the Mainz Cathedral Orchestra are reviving a lost musical treasure. Today, the sacred cantata is the only surviving witness to the rich oratorio culture of the city of Mainz’s flourishing musical life in the late 18th century. The Passion is based on the sentimental text by the Protestant poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler, which achieved some fame through Carl Heinrich Graun’s earlier setting. Graun’s oratorio was also performed in Mainz, along with only a few other Catholic courts. Unlike Graun, Kreusser’s setting of the “Death of Jesus” is deliberately orientated towards a rather operatic musical language and secular performance spaces.
