Anna Dennis sings the part of Mary Magdalene in this new retelling of the passion story from Mary Magdalene's perspective.
Inspired by the non-canonical Gospel of Mary, poetry by Ruth Fainlight, this powerful three-part work blends period instruments with electric guitar. It reimagines Mary as a commanding female figure - described by the composer as “a wise woman in the desert, this kind of raw oracle”.
The work was premiered with the Dunedin Concert at the Barbican Hall on 24th March 2026.
You couldn’t fault the performers, particularly the virtuosic Dunedin chorus, and a committed Farnsworth and Dennis, the latter sending her soprano leaping to the heavens with laser-like brilliance. - Neil Fisher, The Times
Mary Magdalene herself, radiantly sung here by Anna Dennis, is a visionary, with long passages of almost mystical words, the melody leaping from note to note – Erica Jeal, The Guardian
The highlights of Davies’s Passion come in her settings of poems by Ruth Fainlight, wonderfully mythic in thteir references. One portrays Mary “driven mad and cast out from the high walls of Syrian Babylon”, another luxuriates in the beauty of Jesus’s body. Soprano Anna Dennis was equally transcendent in the mad scene extremes of the former and the latter’s sensuous allure. - Richard Fairman, The Financial Times
well performed by the Dunedin Consort, with the spectacular soloist Anna Dennis as Mary - Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
Anna Dennis, singing Magdalene, is no stranger to contemporary works, and she approached the part with consummate skill, delivering the jagged lines of seemingly random notes with commitment and lyricism – especially evident in Fainlight’s ‘Flesh and Blood’ which served as Magdalene’s overtly sexual adoration of Christ. - MusicOMH
Details of the event below:
