I Penitenti Al Sepolcro Del Redentore, ZWV 63

(The penitents at the tomb of the redeemer), ZWV 63, is an oratorio by Jan Dismas Zelenka, commissioned and first composed for a performance on Good Friday, March 30 1736, for his employer Augustus III, in Dresden. The work departing from the usual canon of a setting of the text of one of the Gospels, being instead a poem focusing on the meaning of Christ's sacrifice, is unusual in this aspect.

The work was well received, a contemporary diary from the Dresden Jesuits reporting that on the date in question, "at 8 pm a very elegant new oratorio composed by Zelenka titled I Penitenti al Sepolchro was heard, and for this, candles were placed in the choir." It is also possible that the oratorio was repeated three years later, when the Jesuits again write that Zelenka was the composer of oratorios heard on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday, although there is more certainty that it was again played in Prague in 1738, a performance made possible through the intervention of Zelenka's patron, Jan Hubert Hartig.

The work survives as a manuscript in the Saxon State Library in Dresden, and has been recorded by various modern artists.

Text

The text, written by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicini, combines the Old and New Testaments, by depicting an imaginary meeting between King David, Mary Magdalene and Peter at Christ's tomb.