Holocaust oratorio, “To Be Certain of the Dawn,” performed at Saint John’s

04/15/2008

A Holocaust oratorio, “To Be Certain of the Dawn,” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 26 at Saint John’s Abbey Church, Collegeville.

Singers, instrumentalists and faculty soloists from the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, and Saint John’s University will perform the oratorio, along with performers from St. Cloud State University, the SCSU Cantabile Girls Choir and the St. John’s Boys’ Choir.

The performance is sponsored by the St. Cloud State Jewish Studies Program and the General Mills Foundation of Minneapolis. Although the concert is free and open to the public, you may reserve a seat in advance by picking up tickets at the CSB/SJU Music Department offices during regular business hours.

The oratorio will also be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 25 at Ritsche Auditorium, SCSU.

“To Be Certain of the Dawn,” by composer Stephen Paulus and librettist Michael Dennis Browne, was commissioned in 2001 by the Rev. Michael O’Connell of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. The oratorio premiered in November 2005 at the Basilica of St. Mary to celebrate two events – the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of World War II and the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate (Latin for “In Our Times”) that condemned blaming Jews for the death of Christ. The world premiere was also held within a week of the annual commemoration of Kristallnacht, the beginning of open hostility to Jews in Germany.

Rooted in themes and subjects of mutual interest to the Jewish and Christian faith communities, the oratorio pays tribute to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust and honors survivors and their descendants.

Many of the same performers will present the European premiere of the oratorio May 29 at the site of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France. The concert is one of several to be performed during a May 20-June 4 study tour in Germany, Switzerland and France.