+++ Cancelled +++ Replacement program for ticket holders +++

The oratorio The Creation not only represents a decisive high point in Joseph Haydn's compositional career, but also marks a turning point in the history of oratorio in general. At the turn of the 19th century Haydn broke with the traditional dominance of arias, gave the choir a much greater significance and thus paved the way for a new choral oratorio – one of the decisive pillars of the emerging bourgeois concert life. Following Handel's example, the plot is divided into three parts. The first part describes the first four days of creation with the creation of the earth, the plants and the firmament, and in the second part the creatures are added. The third part deals with the lives of the first humans Adam and Eve and culminates – and with it the entire oratorio – in two concluding large choruses of praise and thanksgiving. The text, translated from an English original by the Prefect of the Vienna Court Library Baron van Swieten, combines the prose texts of the Creation History in the translation of the Luther Bible with contemplative and commentary excerpts from John Milton's Paradise Lost. We would like to take the performance of this work as an opportunity to hold our first climate-neutral concert.