Three hundred years after Johann Sebastian Bach composed his passions, the questions embedded in them prove surprisingly topical. Who bears the blame? Who is sacrificed? Who gets to speak and who is silenced? With Your Flesh and Blood, writer Jeroen Olyslaegers and composer Jef Neve transform that age-old thematic content into a contemporary story about climate anxiety, social media, populism and the difficult relationship between generations. The creation, which premieres on 18 June during STROOM in Dendermonde, presents itself as a human passion: no longer a religious narrative, but an investigation into humanity in a fractured society.
That the passion as a form can still be relevant is in itself a remarkable thought. The genre seems firmly anchored in a Christian tradition that is increasingly remote for many. Yet it was precisely the human drama behind the narrative of suffering that Patrick Windmolders, artistic director of Vocaal Ensemble Reflection, wanted to examine anew. Beneath the theological layer of Bach's passions, he sees a story about exclusion, group pressure, power and responsibility. Phenomena that are no less present today than in the time when the gospel narratives originated.
For the libretto, Windmolders called upon Jeroen Olyslaegers, a writer who in recent years has repeatedly engaged with social fault lines and historical questions of guilt. Olyslaegers found an unexpected connection in the restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece. When the upper panels of the famous altarpiece were unveiled again, it was especially the gaze of the lamb that drew attention. Unlike in later overpaintings, the animal looks the viewer directly in the eye. Not submissively or absent, but with an almost human directness. For Olyslaegers, this became a powerful image for our time.
In Your Flesh and Blood, that lamb is central, not as a religious symbol but as a young person trying to find their place in a world that constantly judges them. Around them emerges a choir of voices reminiscent of social media: a perpetual stream of commentary, indignation and condemnation. The individual is observed, weighed and judged before even getting a voice. It is a mechanism that Olyslaegers makes recognizable without becoming explicitly moralistic. His text moves between satire, rage and compassion, as if trying to capture the noise of contemporary society without fully succumbing to it.
One of the strongest interventions is perhaps the choice to replace the evangelist with a mother figure, performed by An Pierlé. She tries to tell a story but is constantly interrupted by her child, by expectations, by the chaos of daily life. It is a recognizable image of a generation trying to keep all the balls in the air at once. While young people blame their parents for causing today's problems, those same parents struggle with a sense of powerlessness in the face of developments that threaten to overwhelm them as well. The gap between the two generations forms one of the emotional engines of the production.
Musically too, Jef Neve seeks a dialogue between past and present. The composer has often expressed his admiration for Bach and deliberately retains elements from the classical passion tradition. Arias, chorales and choral passages remain recognizable building blocks. At the same time, he wants to avoid the music becoming a historicizing exercise. Just as the text starts from contemporary experiences, Neve seeks a musical language that makes the emotional urgency of today tangible without abandoning tradition.
That experiment fits with the artistic direction of Reflection, which since its inception has consistently coupled music with social questions. For this production, the ensemble collaborates with B.O.X., the ensemble of lute player Pieter Theuns that has been creating new music with historical instruments for fifteen years. This combination of historical timbres and contemporary approaches has already resulted in remarkable collaborations with artists from very diverse musical worlds. In Your Flesh and Blood too, the past does not seem to be reconstructed but used as material to tell something new.
Striking is that despite the dark thematic content, the makers do not arrive at a message of despair. Climate crisis, alienation, toxic leadership and polarization all pass in review, but nowhere does the narrative become a culture-pessimistic lament. As in every classical passion, suffering is central here too, but ultimately it is about the question of how people can continue to relate to each other when old certainties disappear. The lamb looks the world straight in the eye, but at the same time asks whether the world is willing to look back.
Your Flesh and Blood is thus more than an updating of an age-old genre. The production seems above all an attempt to find words again for a society that increasingly struggles to understand itself. Perhaps that is precisely what a passion can be today: not a religious testimony, but a collective exercise in attention.
PERFORMANCE DATES
18 June, 8:30 PM (Premiere)
As part of STROOM
Location: Hangar 43, Dendermonde
21 June, 3 PM
Location: Zaal Athena Antwerpen
In collaboration with Humanistisch Verbond
and huisvandeMens Antwerpen