It feels as though we’ve stumbled upon a rehearsal for a miracle.

A large mixed chorus dressed in black, feet unshod, mill around a central stage above which is suspended a large shining disc. Beams of light cut through the misty air.

Vocal and instrumental soloists are variously plucked out of the gloom seemingly to bear witness to a mystery. An orchestra plays from a gallery, images of its conductor eerily televised on small screens at the opposite corners of the hall, near a huge rose window flanked by organ pipes.

And the music is ancient and modern, joyful and sombre, cerebral and visceral, the jump-cutting styles adding to a sense of time and timelessness, of permanence and provisionality.

West Australian Opera’s Oratorio. Photo © West Beach Studio

The third collaboration between WA Opera and UWA’s Conservatorium of Music, Oratorio is a startling resurrection of a work the English conductor John Eliot Gardiner has said is often considered the “ugly duckling” amongst JS Bach’s oeuvre.

It is a resurrection of a work whose theme is the resurrection of Christ. A resurrection of a work which Bach himself resurrected – the original 1725 pastoral drama...