In May 2015, the musical performance Adam’s Passion was staged at the Noblessner Foundry in Tallinn. Adam’s Passion was based on Arvo Pärt’s works Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, which was written especially for the production. The production also resulted in the concert film, Adam’s Passion, as well as the documentary, The Lost Paradise, by Günter Atteln, which follows the story behind the creation of Adam’s Passion and Arvo Pärt’s work over the period of one year. The documentary was produced by Accentus Music (Leipzig), Estonian Public Broadcasting and Eesti Kontsert.

“I have always been captivated by truth concealed in suspended time. Truth is timeless and immortal. Like a “still life” that reveals a formula for life – energy and motion in apparent motionlessness. Robert Wilson knows this language intimately. I don’t see any misunderstanding between us. It is one breath, one like-mindedness, which excludes all disturbing elements from the very beginning. And I am very grateful for this opportunity, I learned a lot. […]

Adam is the father of us all. Adam complains that he has betrayed the One who created him. He wanted to be smarter than God, he was not obedient. He had a spirit of pride and curiosity. But the same disease is inside us. It started when Cain killed Abel. And then Adam said – and these words are also in my work – that from me will descend people who are constantly at enmity with each other and will kill each other.

How do countries coexist? Communication is either political, economic or cultural. This is our visible world, our life, which our mind understands well and cannot deal with anything else. But look, it doesn’t help us much. It would help us if we could say – and not only say, but also feel – that your child is also my child and my child is your child. It must at least mean that you are my brother or you are my sister, but then we should be related. But maybe we are? Only these roots have to be searched far and wide. And once we come to this realization, we are all one. Because the world is one organism. When we have a toothache, the whole body hurts. […]
Adam himself, our primal father, foresaw the human tragedy and experienced it as his personal guilt. He has suffered all human cataclysms, unto the depths of despair. This pain can also be sensed in the works of great artists, although it does not always have to be pain, it can also be light. Let’s think about Fra Angelico, I don’t have a better example. Or we think of Schubert. Let’s say, let’s think about Mozart. I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.””

– Compiled by Nele Kivisild,
Arvo Pärt Centre