THE PASSION PLAY.

Wairarapa Age, 5 July 1932, Page 4

THE PASSION PLAY.

OPERA HOUSE AUDIENCES IMPRESSED. There were large attendances at both presentations, in the Opera House yesterday, of the pictures of the Passion Play of Oberammergau. At the matinee in the afternoon, those present included many primary and secondary school pupils. The scenes of the Passion Play and illustrations of an historical introduction by which, it was preceded were projected from a series of very beautiful coloured slides. The history of the Passion Play, which has been produced at Oberammergau every ten years since 1634, was related by a lecturer, who also made explanatory comments on each picture thrown on the screen. The pictuies were accompanied by recorded music—the rendering by choirs in the Central Hall, Westminster, of Stainer’s “Crucifixion,’fan • of other compositions. A deep impression evidently was made on old and young by the graciously beautiful representation in which it may be seen that, the peasants of the village of Oberammergau have perpetuated much of what was best in the sacred drama of medieval times. The scenes presented in the Opera House yesterday gave a wonderfully fine impression of a play which stands out in these modern times as an appealing survival of the church plays that were enacted from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries. No one who was privileged to see the pictures could doubt that the peasants of Oberammergau have found a reverent means of impressing on the heart the story of the Passion.