Aquagranda
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| Title: | Aquagranda |
The flood in Venice in 1966 |
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| Shape: | Opera in one act |
| Original language: | Italian |
| Music: | Filippo Perocco |
| Libretto : | Luigi Cerantola |
| Literary source: | Roberto Bianchin: Acqua Granda. Il Romanzo dell'alluvione |
| Premiere: | 4th November 2016 |
| Place of premiere: | Teatro La Fenice , Venice |
| Playing time: | about 80 minutes |
| Place and time of the action: | 4th November 1966 |
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Aquagranda is an opera in one act for soloists, choir, orchestra and electronics by Filippo Perocco (music) with a libretto by Roberto Bianchin and Luigi Cerantola. He wrote it on behalf of the Teatro La Fenice on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Venetian flood disaster in 1966. The premiere took place there on November 4th, 2016.
action
On November 4, 1966, the annual flood, the Acqua alta , reached a record height of almost 2 meters in Venice and flooded almost the entire city. The opera depicts the events from the point of view of simple people like the real future restaurant owner Ernesto Ballarin on the offshore island of Pellestrina .
At the beginning of the opera, the two fishermen Fortunato and Nane watch the rising water level. While Fortunato worries about the future, Nane is confident that the tide will soon recede.
The young Ernesto tells his father Fortunato that he wants to leave Pellestrina to try his luck elsewhere. His father tries in vain to change his mind. Ernesto wants to go to the market with his wife Lilly to buy shoes for the trip. Then the pharmacist Luciano appears with the news that the radio is reporting on bad weather all over Europe.
Around midnight the water level rose to one meter. The women cannot sleep because of worry. The island will gradually flood and the power will fail. There is a tremendous crash and police officer Cester informs residents that the two hundred year old dam has broken.
The water has now reached the second floor. All fear for their lives. Cester announces the evacuation of the island over a loudspeaker. Since his father refuses to leave the house, Ernesto decides to stay with him. After most of the residents have left the village, Cester comes to him with the few other remaining residents and a white signal flag. There is still no sign that the tide is receding.
After a while, Fortunato was the first to notice that the Scirocco that had driven the floods towards land was wearing off. The water gradually sinks again. The evacuees, including Ernesto's wife Lilli and her friend Leda, return and they all celebrate. The village will be rebuilt.
layout
The one-act opera consists of twelve scenes and an epilogue.
According to the composer's own words, the musical structure is composed of fragments, impure sounds, "sound snippets" and "acoustic rubble". The text of the libretto is not interpreted in terms of content in the music. Instead, the words are broken up into individual phonemes, which the orchestra doubles and warps. Only at the dramatic climax in the penultimate scene do a few melodic themes develop.
The main role is assigned to the choir, which proclaims the destructive power of water from both sides of the scene as the “voice of the lagoon” at the beginning and the end and constantly accompanies the feelings of the protagonists during the opera. The “vocal fabric” and the stereo effect of the choir occasionally arouse associations with the Venetian old masters Claudio Monteverdi or Giovanni Gabrieli . The special compositional technique is also in line with the younger Venetian composers Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono . The music journalist Dieter David Scholz described the sound effect with the words: "Perocco's music gurgles and gurgles, whispers and thunders, sings and screams as irrepressibly as the sea."
Work history
The composer Filippo Perocco is one of the founders of the contemporary music ensemble L'arsenale . His opera Aquagranda was commissioned by the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, which wanted to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the flood disaster of 1966. The librettist Luigi Cerantola processed the novel Acqua Granda in collaboration with the opera director Damiano Michieletto . Il Romanzo dell'alluvione by Roberto Bianchin. His verses are characterized by "irregular lines with plenty of couleur locale, a high proportion of dialect, onomatopoeic fragments of language and fragments of folk song" (Opera World).
Andrea Mastroni (Fortunato), Mirko Guadagnini (Ernesto), Giulia Bolcato (Lilli), Silvia Regazzo (Leda), Vincenzo Nizzardo (Nane), William Corrò (Luciano) and Marcello sang at the world premiere on November 4, 2016 at the Teatro La Fenice Nardis (Cester). The choir and orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice were directed by Marco Angius . Damiano Michieletto was in charge of the production, the stage design was by Paolo Fantin , the costumes by Carla Teti , the lighting design by Alessandro Carletti and the choreography by Chiara Vecchi. The opera was enriched with a water installation (a large glass wall slowly fills with water, breaks and floods the stage) as well as film clips from old news programs and newer documentaries and performed like a “gigantic multimedia show”. The production was a great success and was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience.
A recording of the performance on November 10, 2016 was made available for one year on the Culturebox website .
Web links
- Program of the performance (PDF, English) on richard-wagner.org
- Trailer of the opera on YouTube
- Dirk Schümer: How the world came to an end in Italy. Performance review in the world November 4, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Renato Verga: Venetian floods the setting for Filippo Perocco's Aquagranda at La Fenice. Performance review (English) on bachtrack.com, accessed February 6, 2017.
- ^ A b c d Carlo Vitali, Wiebke Roloff (transl.): Unter Wasser - Perocco: Aquagranda. Performance review. In: Opernwelt from January 2017, p. 49.
- ↑ a b Dieter David Scholz: Flood as an opera in Venice - the world premiere of “Aquagranda” at La Fenice , accessed on February 6, 2017.
- ^ Aquagranda, opera by F. Perocco on veniceoperatickets.com , accessed on February 6, 2016.
- ↑ a b Aquagranda de Filippo Perocco au Teatro La Fenice on Culturebox (video available until November 14, 2017).
- ^ Work information on the website of the composer Filippo Perocco , accessed on February 6, 2017.