Leonard Bernstein's Mass April 24, 2010

At the beginning of the score, all performers are in harmony and agreement. During the course of the Mass, however, the street choir begins expressing doubts and suspicions about the necessity of God in their lives and the role of the Mass itself. At the play's emotional climax, during the anti-war statements of Dona nobis pacem ("Give us peace"), this doubt and confusion spreads to the Celebrant himself, who breaks the cross and hurls the just-consecrated bread and wine to the ground in an act of sacrilege. The other cast members collapse to the ground as if dead while the Celebrant sings a song calling his lifetime of faith and beliefs into question. At the end of his song, he too, collapses. The plot is resolved when the altar server, who was absent from the stage during the increasing tension of the various players, sings a hymn of praise to God and restores the faith of the Celebrant and the three choirs, who then join the altar server, one by one, in his hymn of praise, universal peace and love.