Oberammergau Passion Play Canceled as Coronavirus Locks Down Germany

Germany is on lockdown because of the virus, with large gatherings banned. On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel used a televised address to plead with people to obey restrictions and self-isolate.

“This is serious,” Ms. Merkel said. “Take it seriously. Since German reunification — no, since World War II — our country has never faced a challenge where we depended so much on our collective actions and solidarity.”

Each performance of the Passion Play would have been watched by around 4,500 people, many of whom would have traveled to Germany especially for the event. Organizers said in the statement that the decision was taken with the local health authorities, who decided that, even if Germany’s restrictions on large-scale gatherings were lifted by May, there would still be “a high risk of recurrent infections over a long period of time.”

“At this stage, it can be clearly predicted that an event on the scale of the Passion Play is not feasible,” the health department of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the local authority, said in the statement. “The risk is too high that new chains of infection will develop,” it added.

This is not the first time an edition of the Passion Play has been canceled. In 1770, Elector Maximilian III, then Duke of Bavaria, banned all passion plays, as part of a drive against extravagance.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/theater/oberammergau-passion-play-coronavirus.html