Testament (2026)

SYNOPSIS

Mary is old and, as Testament begins, she is being watched by three men, Paul, Marcus, and John, who are determined to record and shape the story of her son. They want what is written to define the future. She, on the other hand, wants to recount only what she herself witnessed, what she knows to be true.

The opera unfolds inside her memory. Past and present appear side by side, often without clear boundaries. The performers (singers, actors and instrumentalists) remain visible throughout as a single ensemble whose individual members move in and out of roles.

What we see is not a single, settled account, but a struggle between lived experience and the versions of what happened that others want to fix and arrange in words. This tension reflects a broader historical reality. The accounts of Jesus’s life that became the Gospels were written years after his death, shaped by memory and the need for a clear and inspiring narrative rather than direct eyewitness record. Testament imagines a figure who was there, who saw and who remembered.

The opera begins at the grave of Lazarus. Martha pleads for her brother to be brought back to life, and the miracle occurs, but instead of joy, it brings a sense of strangeness, as if the natural order has been disturbed. From here, the story unfolds through Mary’s recollections: moments from her son’s life, her memory of his followers, and her growing sense that events are moving towards something starkly irreversible.

Back in the present, the three men press Mary to confirm their version of events. They speak of belief, redemption and eternal life. Mary resists them. Her memories are exact but her interpretation is more uncertain, more human. She recalls a wedding where her son performed miracles, but remembers the occasion as filled with ominous moments, the first real signs of danger.

The centre of the opera is her account of the crucifixion. She describes it plainly - the physical reality, the violence, and the fact that, despite everything, the world around continued as normal. Smoke rises; people go about their day. Nothing stops. Mary does not remain until the end. All those years later, this is something she cannot easily face or admit. Her account does not offer meaning or resolution, only the jagged truth as she experienced it.

In the final scenes, the conflict between Mary and the men becomes explicit. They insist that her son’s death brought salvation to the world. Mary rejects this. For her, what happened cannot be justified or transformed into something greater. Her response is simple and final. It was not worth it.

As the opera draws to a close, the sense of time and place begins to dissolve. A recurring, intangible presence, suggested through sound and light, returns and expands, surrounding the ensemble. Mary is left alone to reflect on memory, loss, and the limits of language itself.

The work ends not with resolution, but with disappearance. Sound fades, structure falls away, and the space returns to stillness.