The urban opera La porte des Ténèbres — The Gate of Shadows — is scheduled to run for two days at the end of October in the streets of Toulouse, France. The show is generating a great deal of concern due to its multiple satanic and esoteric references. In response, the archbishop of Toulouse, Guy de Kerimel, decided to consecrate the city and diocese to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on October 16, to protect the city from “dark threats.”
The name of this show, which will be performed from October 25 to 27 in the streets of Toulouse, is evocative enough, but it is above all its content that is causing concern for the archbishop. “Dark clouds are gathering over our world,” he says.
Demons and burning churches
This “urban opera” financed by the city will feature large mobile statues, such as the Minotaur, his spider half-sister Ariadne, and Lilith, a half-woman half-scorpion creature described by the show's organizers as the one who “controls the passage between our world and that of the underworld.” (Lilith is originally a demonic figure of Jewish folklore.)
On the poster presenting the show, the three giant protagonists are surrounded by a multitude of less than reassuring references: churches devoured by fire, walking skeletons, here an angel, there a red creature with a calf's head …
“Some people enjoy watching horror films, but you have to pay to see them. If we don't feel like watching all this, we'll just have to hole up at home for three days. The sheer size of the structures makes it hard to escape this sad spectacle,” Archbishop de Kerimel told Aleteia.
François Delarozière, director of this urban show by Compagnie de la Machine, denies any satanic references.
“We're really telling a story about love, death, life and the afterlife, with the great myths that have spanned the centuries (...) We all have the right to say what we want and what we think, but we don't have the right to censor or forbid,” he told AFP.
The opera's prologue, however, is sobering: “Driven from the Garden of the Hesperides, Lilith, the scorpion woman, has found refuge in the depths of the Earth. Freed by Hades, king of the underworld, she wanders from city to city in search of damned souls to increase her followers and her power. (...) Assembling prodigious signs, she attempts to open a passageway to the beyond.”
Act I, scene 1, performed on October 25, even features “three prodigious signs,” which are none other than “Satan's cross, Lucifer's Sigil, and the sign of the beast.”
Consecration to the Sacred Heart
Taking advantage of the 350th anniversary of Christ's apparitions to St. Margaret Mary, Archbishop de Kerimel decided to consecrate the diocese to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at a Mass on Wednesday, October 16.
He describes this as a “spiritual act to protect our city of Toulouse and our diocese from these dark threats and despair. We need serenity, not darkness,” he told Aleteia. “I wanted to propose something that would enable us to look to the future with confidence, but through a spiritual response, because I don't believe that petitions or personal attacks are very effective.”
“How did Jesus conquer? We are disciples of Christ, and as such, we must react not according to the spirit of the world,” he tells Aleteia, “but according to the spirit of Christ. We cannot triumph by shouting louder than others. It seems to me that this is not what Christ is asking of us.”
“The heart of Jesus is Christ's ultimate victory over death, over darkness. It is the victory of love. There is no other victory over evil and death than love, mercy,” he says.
Still, he recognizes that an act of consecration won’t magically make the problems go away. “The world will only be transformed if people let themselves be touched.”
Catholics are not the only ones to express their disagreement with such a show being staged in the streets of the Pink City.
The Protestant community also voiced its disapproval: “We love Toulouse for its history, its culture and its dynamism. (...) Toulouse is life, joy and beauty! However, church representatives are shocked and alarmed by the choice of theme for this act, which presents Toulouse as 'the gateway to darkness,'” reacted representatives of the French Protestant Federation.
