Performed by Figure, and the brainchild of the ensemble’s founder and musical director Frederick Waxman, Our Mother in some ways resists classification, though in essence it is a music theatre piece that takes Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater as its starting point for an exploration of the nature of grief. It’s not for purists. Pergolesi’s 1736 masterpiece is frequently considered contemplative and serene, and indeed some of it is. But in depicting Christ’s crucifixion, it is also, as Waxman puts it, “an evolving reflection on a mother watching her child die”, and a fierce anguish consequently offsets its moments of calm. Along with director Sophie Daneman, Waxman’s aim has been to reimagine it in terms of a communal exploration of bereavement and compassion, beyond its immediate theological context.
The piece itself has been expanded with a prelude and interludes by Welsh-born composer Alex Mills, in which rhythmic and melodic fragments from the original morph into passacaglias and threnodies that have a timeless directness and simplicity. Pergolesi’s two singers have become five, representing multiple generations of women, who shuttle the vocal lines between them, both within arias and ensembles: the great Emma Kirkby, now in her seventies, is the eldest; the youngest, Nadya Pickup, is in her teens.
The audience sits or stands (you can do either), meanwhile, around a cruciform platform that has the instrumentalists gathered like mourners at its foot, the singers, dressed in street clothes, effectively emerging from the assembled crowd. There’s no obvious narrative, though soprano Rowan Pierce repeatedly shakes with horror and shock at the thought of the Virgin Mary’s agony, and mezzo Catherine Carby, dressed in black, suggests a priestly figure undergoing a crisis of faith, as Kirkby and mezzo Alexandra Achillea Pouta, attempt – initially in vain – to offer consolation. Pickup, meanwhile, does not appear until we reach Sancta Mater, Istud Agas, after the halfway point, when the mood begins to shift from despair to hope. There’s a moment of real magic at Quando Corpus Morietur, where Pergolesi leaves human suffering behind and gazes into eternity, as light – as if from paradise – begins to glimmer above everyone’s heads.
The singing is lovely. Kirkby can be extraordinarily touching, her voice now suggesting fragility as well as beauty. Carby is all intense, tragic declamation, while Pickup sounds bright, silvery, the voice of optimism. Waxman conducts from the organ with admirable dramatic focus. At the close, song sheets are handed out and the audience are asked to join singers and players in Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus as an encore. As a whole, it all arouses mixed feelings, perhaps, as Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater needs no such interventions for its impact to be felt. But everything is done with such commitment and sincerity that you cannot help but be moved by it.
• Our Mother is at Stone Nest, London, until 23 March
