Works

Oratorio grottesco per soli, coro di voci bianche, coro misto e orchestra su testo di Mimmo Borrelli

How an orchestra becomes Naples. How sounds become a volcano. These are the challenges that seethe within the composition of Napucalisse. My love for this city, with its extraordinarily rich musical history and a present that always offers a vivid listening experience, is reflected in a score as ever-changing as its protagonist: Naples. Here we encounter characters drawn from an everyday yet age-old mythology, such as the wise old Cinello, enveloped in an ironic and extroverted, pungent and grainy timbral movement, who first presents himself to the mountain amid the veil of harmonic vapours of Cammera. Part street artist, part exorcist, he appears capable, through a dialectical spell, of sublimating the negative energies hidden in the city’s most disreputable recesses, while remaining convinced that it can change at any moment; and so he invokes Vesuvius, speaking to it as to an eternal, motionless friend, the keeper of every story ever told at its feet.

Then there is the Assassino ‘i Cartone, the emblem of a Naples that no longer believes in the future. A tragic mask, fatally inclined towards suicide, a coward of fragile substance in his vocal expression, he embodies insubstantiality in Sulfatara, his voice floating uncertainly until it risks being swallowed up. Memories bubble to the surface as the Volcano reflects upon its own fire; the lava-like rhythm dissolves into a free-flowing breath and the killer looks within himself. A childhood memory reveals the child he once was, his hope and the good heart that a life gone wrong transformed into a killer; here, even the music, freed from the law of bar lines, suspends judgement in what is the only movement outside time.

The music envelops the only female soloist in an earthy light, though she is in fact a soloist twice over: Madonna Partenope, an angelic oracle who descends with a pure voice, a mistress in keeping clouds, storms and furies at bay, yet also capable of miracles through her saving and life-giving maternal essence.

Alongside the three symbolic voices, the choral character of Guainella also enters into dialogue with Vesuvius, embodied by the children’s festive voices. It is the face of a renewed present, appearing for the first time in Magma, with a wordless song murmured over a mysterious and distant texture, the breath of the children’s pure spirit, emerging from the shapeless mass as it approaches the city.

Behind the characters stands Vesuvius, embodied by the shifting power of a large mixed choir. From the polymorphous incandescence of the volcanic material springs a multiplicity of voices: friendly voices with which to converse, ancient voices that return even within the most contemporary accents, dormant voices that may awaken and become dangerous. The sound gleams with restless harmonic refractions, sonic symbols interpreted through an ever-changing orchestration. It is magma, forever transforming yet always remaining itself, becoming saliva and word in the visceral language of Vesuvius. A dense and viscous mass of sound, expanded in the Madonna’s solo movement, the fifth, Pioggia di fango, where the divine apparition arrives to put an end to violence. “My city weeps because it has no hope and smiles because it bears no resentment,” sings the Mother, and her tears mingle with the caresses of the strings, accompanied by six horns, timpani, harp, piano and sparse percussion. A lyrical moment that penetrates the dense vocal fabric of the lava-like element, intensely interwoven with its timbral and rhythmic structure.

It is precisely in the movement devoted to Lava that the phrasing reaches its greatest degree of articulation. Asymmetrically intertwined in an intricate polyphony, beginning with “Napule senza famiglie” and ending with “Napule r’ammore”, these phrases encapsulate the multiplicity of Naples, capable of expressing the cries of the poor and desperate, but also the smile and radiance of a living city. A kaleidoscopic score that slowly transforms through its individual musical numbers, independent as they follow one another yet inexorably caught up in the churning of the same magmatic material. Thematic returns suggest an internal dramaturgy within this invisible theatre of words and music.

A theatre without action, or rather a theatre of sensation: a place where the characters are not seen but are inwardly felt and reconstructed by those who love Naples, live it and listen to it. A theatre that you feel upon and within yourself, in an inner space where the chambers and scenic boundaries of a dramaturgy that is grotesque from its very subtitle can be rediscovered, capable of drawing out the ironic essence that is an innate component of the Neapolitan soul, unsurpassed in its ability to defuse the dramas of life.

A journey that opens with a gesture of birth, an orchestral Preludio that rises like dawn from the depths of the night and, nourished by cascades of notes, grows until it illuminates the gulf. The story closes in the peaceful Quiescenza, with the volcano falling asleep to the angelic singing of the children’s voices, intoning “Io sono la mia terra” as the score slips into the final Postludio. The choir begins to sing deep, rhythmic sounds, unleashing a ritual of liberation. A concentric dance around Vesuvius, a hymn to fire and earth, which regenerate and purify everything. A joyful apocalypse of life.

Year of composition

2012

Instrumentation

3.3.3.3. / 6.3.4.1 / Timp, 2 Perc, Pf, A / Children’s choir, Mixed choir: SCTB / Strings

Duration

55 min(s)

Language

it

Ricordi catalogue number

140810
140810 – score
140811 – parts
140812 – reduction for voice & piano

Commissioned by

Commissioned by Teatro di San Carlo, Naples

World premiere

28/09/2012