New opera celebrates a botched restoration

Beast Jesus. Spider Monkey. Everyone's a critic. And when the world caught a glimpse of one woman's attempt to restore a crumbling fresco of Jesus, boy, did they pile on. 

In 2012, Cecelia Gimenez picked up her paintbrush in her hometown of Borja, Spain and, with the priest's blessing at the church where she was married, had her children baptized, and had volunteered for most of her 80 years, she set about restoring the 1930 Ecce Homo.

Originally painted directly onto the church's plaster wall in the 1930s by local art instructor Elías Garcia Martínez, it was, when Cecelia set to restoring it, a bit of a mess. The image of Christ in his crown of thorns, looking upward, was crumbling from the bottom up. As is now well known, Cecelia didn't do a great job.

But half-way around the world, when Colorado-based playwright and librettist Andrew Flack saw reports on all of this, he was inspired by Jesus' new look. And deeply moved with empathy for the stricken-looking Cecelia. For Flack, this is a story of faith.

"The image of Christ like that took my breath away," says Flack, who has written an opera, Behold the Man, about all of this. "In the original the figure of Christ is looking heavenward, and not really engaged with the viewer. The version that Cecelia painted, the eyes of Jesus are looking directly at the viewer. It's a stare that made me think that Jesus might be asking 'What is it that you are doing in the world?"

Flack immediately partnered with composer Paul Fowler, assistant professor of music at Naropa University in Boulder Colorado, and the two began work on the project, which they hope to premiere in Borja, Spain in 2017.

Flack first met Cecelia Gimenez and her family in 2013 when he travelled there for research. 

Borja, which has been caught up in a deep recession since 2008, has enjoyed a reprieve of sorts with a boost in tourism as a direct result of the fame brought about because of all of this. More than 100,000 tourists have visited the Church, with donations of 150,000 Euros being added directly to the church coffers.

While Cecelia suffered through weeks and months of initial torment, she has now come to see all of this as a bit of a miracle. Flack has used the town's revival, which he suspected might occur when he first was attracted to this story, as part of the storyline of his opera.

"We're not taking the view that this is great art. We are saying there is a reason why there was such a sensation around this," says Flack. "It's become a mythic event."