A new, highly relevant commissioned work is currently being created for the Werkstattbühne: Passion of the Common Man is both Opera and secular oratorio, transferring the form of the Passion into our present—or rather into an unsettlingly near future. Inspired by the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach and yet radically independent, the Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason and the librettist Royce Vavrek create a work that opens up religious structures and poses existential questions anew: What does human suffering mean today and in the future?

At the center of the piece lies the archetypal motif of every Passion: One individual suffers on behalf of the community. Yet this community lives in a dystopian world in which pain is controlled, illness overcome, and nature artificially reproduced. Medicine and technology have almost eliminated physical suffering; food grows without soil, plants thrive without sunlight. Everything is clean, sterile, efficient. No blood, no dirt, no wounds—and perhaps no true experience.

Composed for four singers, choir, and orchestra, Bjarnason’s work combines a distinctive, experimental musical language with electronic elements. Echoes of Bach’s chorales flash up—only to be broken, expanded, transformed. The music is multi-layered, atmospherically dense, marked by Nordic clarity and at the same time by a disquieting intensity. Choral passages alternate with intimate moments; electronic soundscapes unfold; theatrical gestures permeate the musical fabric, giving rise to a futuristic sonic experience.

The British director Netia Jones, who is also responsible for stage and set, creates an aesthetically self-contained world. The Werkstattbühne is transformed into a clinically white, futuristic space. A hydroponic farm—beautiful and unsettling at once—replaces nature. Plants grow without soil, nourished by artificial solutions. Harsh LED light cuts through the sterile environment. Humanity seems detached from nature—and yet remains dependent on oxygen, nourishment, energy.

The audience witnesses a ritual that also evokes a court proceeding. A Master figure—a mature, wise woman—guides the ceremony. This role is written for the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter: She narrates, comments, and directs the gaze. At the center of the ritual stands a young man, the proxy. He has been chosen to suffer for all others. Blindfolded, he accepts his fate—almost with longing. A young woman stands ready as a possible substitute. A companion, once a farmer in a past, earthbound time, leads the proxy along his path. The choir, dressed in uniform white and connected via tubes to an anonymous source of life, comments on the events: distant, collective, deindividualized.

The work is still in progress—musically, scenically, dramaturgically—with an open ending: Will the sacrifice be carried out? Will it be refused? Is there redemption, dissolution, resistance?