Prometeo

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Work data
Title: Prometeo
Original title: Prometeo. Tragedia dell'ascolto
Original language: Italian
Music: Luigi Nono
Libretto : Massimo Cacciari
Premiere: September 25, 1984
Place of premiere: Venice
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours
people
  • Five singers, two speakers, choir

Prometeo. Tragedia dell'ascolto ( Italian Prometheus. Tragedy of hearing ) is an opera by the Italian composer Luigi Nono . The world premiere took place on September 25, 1984 in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice under the direction of Claudio Abbado . A second, revised final version was premiered a year later, on September 25, 1985 in Milan .

libretto

In the libretto by Massimo Cacciari Italian versions of texts are listed that the myth of Prometheus are dedicated. Specifically, these are works by Aeschylus ( The Fettered Prometheus ), Sophocles ( The Trachinians , Oedipus on Colonos ), Euripides ( Alcestis ), Pindar ( Nemean Oden ), Hesiod ( Theogony ), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( Prometheus ), Friedrich Hölderlin ( Hyperion ), Friedrich Nietzsche , Rainer Maria Rilke and Walter Benjamin .

construction

The work consists of nine parts:

  1. Prologo
  2. Isola great
  3. Isola seconda: Io - Prometeo / Hölderlin / Stasimo primo
  4. Interludio primo
  5. Tre voci a)
  6. Isola Terza - Quarta - Quinta
  7. Tre voci b)
  8. Interludio secondo
  9. Stasimo seconda

occupation

The final version from 1985 provides for the following cast:

Origin and performance history

Prometeo , Nono's most important late work, was created in 1981 in the SWR experimental studio with the participation of Hans Peter Haller and André Richard . The first performance in 1984 in Venice under the direction of Claudio Abbado included the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the choir of the Freiburg University of Music . The stage was designed by the architect Renzo Piano as a wooden ark, with those performing on balconies on three levels. After the performance in 1985, the wooden structure remained in the storage room of La Scala in Milan and has not been used until now. But there are plans to reuse them in Matera , which is a European Capital of Culture in 2019 .

The French and German premieres followed in 1987 in Paris (Festival d'Automne) and Frankfurt am Main ( Alte Oper ), a West Berlin performance in 1988 as part of the Berliner Festwochen at the Berliner Philharmonie, with the Ensemble Modern under the direction of Friedrich Goldmann , with David Shallon (Paris / Frankfurt) and Ingo Metzmacher (Berlin) as second conductor. Further performances followed u. a. in Gibellina (Sicily) (1991), Amsterdam (1992), Salzburg (1993), Lisbon (1995), Brussels (1997). The South American premiere took place in November 2013 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires .

Peculiarities of the work

In Prometeo, Nono pursues a differentiation of the sound that does not result from exceeding the extremes within a wide spectrum. Instead, it is based on a wealth of nuances within a small span, whereby in addition to articulation and dynamics , the timbre and room acoustics are also included. For the sixth measure, Nono demands a sevenfold, i.e. H. an incredibly quiet piano . Jürg Stenzl explains:

"The listener soon realizes that in Nono's Prometeo the conventional hierarchy of musical design elements has been largely reversed: While pitch and duration of the sound previously dominated the importance of dynamics, timbre and space, in Prometeo the - made possible by live electronics - Movement of the sound in space is just as important as the live-electronic transformation of the sung and played sound ... What Nono was looking for was no longer the dramatic-expressive gesture (as in his previous stage works Intolleranza 1960 and Al gran sole carico d'amore ), but the nuance, the barely perceptible changes, the 'smallest transition' and its expressive power. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Prometeo" Musical space, Venice (Italy)
  2. ↑ In vista del 2019 Matera punta su rigenerazione e partecipazione Mariagrazia Barlette, in: Edilizia e Territorio, October 24, 2014
  3. ↑ Lydia Jeschke: Prometeo - conceptions of history in Luigi Nono's audio tragedy. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1997. p. 9 fn. 1.
  4. ↑ Beate Kutschke: Wild thinking in the new music: the idea of ​​the end of the story with Theodor W. Adorno and Wolfgang Rihm. Königshausen & Neumann, p. 267.

literature

  • Caroline Lüderssen: The recovered text: aesthetic concepts of the libretto in Italian music theater after 1960 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Stefan Drees: Prometeo. In: Elisabeth Schmierer (Ed.): Lexikon der Oper , Vol. 2, Laaber 2002, p. 412 f.
  • Peter Andraschke: creative fire. Compositional Prometheus Fantasies. In: Freiburger Universitätsblätter , Volume 39, Issue 150, 2000, pp. 75–88, here: 80–84.

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