Considering Matthew Shepard is a heartfelt choral oratorio by the American composer Craig Hella Johnson. The work premiered in 2016, and this was its Sydney premiere. It was conceived as a memorial for Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was the victim of a hate killing in Wyoming in 1998. His death led to the passage of a federal US Hate Crimes Prevention Act a decade later.

Considering Matthew Shepard. All photographs © Robert Catto

Written in the form of the Bach Passions, this is a Passion for a contemporary Saint Matthew (so to speak). The libretto is taken from the writings of several American poets, including two from Wyoming, and deals with Shepard’s cruel and tragic death and its aftermath. Mortally beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the freezing cold, Shepard was subject to a grotesque ‘crucifixion’ (although the two perpetrators were probably too ignorant to see it that way), which makes the Passion setting sadly appropriate. Johnson emphasises the connection to Bach at the outset by quoting Prelude No 1 in C Major (which another composer, Charles Gounod, used as the accompaniment to his Ave...