(3 of 3)
staging
the story, for which Jews have been reviled through the centuries
(see p. 44), some for cramping into commercial dimensions a grave,
long-drawn folk epic. The Palm. Sunday entry into Jerusalem. was a
complex, splendid orchestration of crowds flowing in great whorls
toward and about the temple portals, looking ever backward to the
approaching figure of the Christus. For the Last Supper, Leonardo's
faded painting was lavishly restored in living shapes. On Calvary the
greensward was cool, terribly oblivious of the burdened crosses.
Solemnities of tone from orchestra, organ and choir sounded through
the entire pageant. In the street outside a fire siren wailed. For more
than a century and a half the Fassnacht family has dominated the
Freiburg Passion Play, passing its privilege to its heirs. In Manhattan six
Fassnachts appeared. Georg was a tragically mercurial Judas. Georg
Jr. was Johannes. Amalie, Elsa and Augusta were respectively Mary, Mary
Magdalene, the Blind Woman. Adolf, the eldest, gave to the Christus a
grave presence, a tenor voice of such reedy purity and pliability that
the German tongue seemed, in his mouth, no longer one of the world's
least lovely languages.
*-Famed Manhattan hardware store.
* More famed, not so ancient, is the Passion Play presented at
ten-year intervals by the inhabitants of Oberammergau, Germany. This
version began in 16.33.
