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Letter #10, 2016: The Passion that Looms Over the Pope-Kirill Meeting[2016-02-06][Engleză]February 6, 2016, Saturday -- The Passion that Looms Over the Pope Francis-Patriarch Kirill Meeting in CubaThe "Diplomacy of Music" I just received an email bringing my attention to an article by Dr. Terry Mattingly, an Orthodox scholar and writer who edits the popular GetReligion.org website. Here is the link. The Mattingly article quotes extensively from my letter of yesterday thank you, Dr. Mattingly. The article contains a link to a video which shows the world premiere performance in Moscow on March 27, 2007 of Metropolitan Hilarion's The Passion According to St. Matthew. The same concert was repeated in Rome two nights later, in an event I helped to organize. So please visit the video, even if only for a few seconds, to get a sense of the music, its passion, its sorrow, its serenity in the face of suffering. Mattingly's article reaches the correct conclusion: there is a "back story" to this upcoming historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, a "back story" which is virtually unknown. That "back story" involves among other encounters and events a series of concerts in which Russian singers and musicians presented to audiences in Moscow, Rome, Washington, New York, Boston (Massachusetts), Dallas (Texas), and other cities (including in Ukraine). These concerts presented music which shows that, despite all the horrors of the past century, the mythical "Russian soul" still endures. That "back story" involves music, yes -- but much more than music. It involves courage, hope, and faith. It involves the dedication of Russian Orthodox singers and musicians who flew from Moscow to Rome to present their music, the expression of their deepest aspirations, to a Roman public on March 29, 2007. They had performed on March 27 in Moscow, boarded a flight to Rome on March 28, slept a few hours that evening in Rome, rehearsed the concert on the morning of the 29th, then performed on the evening of the 29th. The singers and musicians courageously fought their weariness. But as I watched the concert that evening in March, one Russian woman in the choir began to sway, then collapsed, exhausted, halfway through the concert. She had fainted. This is the most indelible memory I retain from that concert. A Russian woman who sang literally until she could sing no more. She was helped off-stage by her fellow choir members, who then returned to continue singing. Strange things occurred in the lead-up to that concert, things I have never written about until now. The idea for the concert emerged in November of 2006, just a few weeks after Hilarion began to compose the music in August of 2006, when melodies "came into his mind" as he was driving a car between Vienna and Budapest. He was then the Russian Orthodox bishop in the central European Russian Orthodox diocese headed by those two cities. The proposal to perform the music in Rome at the end of March, during the days just before Easter in the spring of 2007 -- in a year when Easter fell on the same date in both the Eastern and Western calendars -- came in an email which arrived at the end of November. I was in Istanbul, where Pope Benedict XVI had gone to meet with Patriarch Bartholomew. Though a journalist, I agreed to try to help organize the concert. There would be only four months to prepare everything -- December, January, February, March... I entered into the whirlwind. The first meeting was with Alexei Puzakov, the conductor of the Tretyakov Gallery Choir of Moscow, and a friend of Hilarion from their teenage years. Puzakov, whom I had never met, was to come to Rome to meet me and choose the location for the concert. I was to go to St. Bartholomew's Church, situated on an island in the Tiber river called the Isola Tibertina. I would find Alexei dressed as a conductor, in a black suit and a bow tie, and introduce myself. I went to St. Bartholomew's at 6 p.m. but was surprised to find the church dark and empty. It was closed. I phoned Leonid Sevastianov, my contact in Moscow. "Hey," I said. "There's no one here. It's all dark. The church is locked." "Perhaps the hour is wrong," Leonid said. "Wait an hour longer. Until 7 pm." So I waited until 7 p.m. It was cold, and dark. No one came. An auspicious start to the enterprise, I thought. I started to walk back through the streets of Rome toward the Vatican. In December, when the shortest day of the year comes, it is dark in Rome before 5 p.m. For no reason I can explain, I decided to change my course. I crossed into Trastevere. "I'll stop for a moment at Santa Maria in Trastevere," I thought. I walked into the back of the church, the oldest one in the world dedicated to Mary. It was full. The Community of San'Egidio was having an evening of song and prayer. I heard singing. The words were in... Russian. "Hmmm," I thought. I walked around the back of the church, then down the left aisle. The singing stopped. I saw a man dressed in a black suit wearing a black bow-tie. He was standing just off to the left of the altar. I walked up to him. He looked at me, not recognizing me, since we had never met. "Alexei," I said. "Bob?" he replied. "Yes," I said. "Good to meet you... Sorry I'm late." ==================== The next day, we met and climbed together to the dome of St. Peter's, he from Russia, me from America, struggling to understand one another. We looked out over the ancient city, and down upon the Paul VI Audience Hall. Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 1092, Ultimul acces: 2026-04-29 07:31:06
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