ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
The story is well-known – only one people refuses
to succumb to the victorious Assyrian commander
Holofernes, and therefore he threatens it with extinction:
Judith's people. The central image of this
traditional story is this:
a woman dresses up, walks
into the enemy's camp, takes his sword and beheads
him. What follows are the liberation and gratitude
of her people. Thus the apocryphal Bible story in
the book of Judith. – Alternatively, there is a jubilee
chorus, as in Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha triumphans
of 1716, where the festive music for full orchestra
lends the drama a certain baroque archaism. Another
alternative: the woman, feeling like a failure
and humiliated in body and soul, returns to her
people, whose triumph she perceives as scorn – thus
one hundred years later in Friedrich Hebbel's version.
For two thousand years, the image of Judith
holding the head of Holofernes has stood for the
encounter between two people in whom two systems
meet, systems that attract each other even though
and because they must destroy each other: community
versus individuals, faith versus nihilism, law
versus anarchy, asceticism versus excess. This encounter
between man and woman takes us to the
threshold between triumph and failure, image and
play, drama and music.