Three fragments from the Don Giovanni by Mozart and new compositions by Pierre Jodlowski, Michele Tadini, Maria Gabriella Zen, Marcello Filotei, Federico Troncatti, Martina Tomner (commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia) world premiere

Francesco Zorzini, Marco Marinoni (commissioned by the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello of Venice)  world premiere
Free entrance

 

Pierre Jodlowsky The Ghost Women (3 video installations)

Michele Tadini Requiem_#2065 for female chorus and electronics

Maria Gabriella Zen Don Giovanni, variazioni sul mito. Melologo filosofico. 7 variations for female chorus, percussions (and organ in a distant room)

Marcello Filotei Walking Sax (un Don Giovanni improvvisato) for tenor saxophone and eight-channel magnetic tape

Federico Troncatti L'ateisto fulminato for organ and harpsichord, organ and piano and electronics

Martina Tomner Tempelmusik II for strings

Francesco Zorzini Serenata d’addio for strings

Marco Marinoni Black Drop for ensemble and live electronics (Marco Marinoni and Stefano Alessandretti)

 

from a concept by Luca Francesconi

project and dramaturgy Francesco Micheli

coordination Federica Parolini, Michele Tadini

actors Maria Pilar Perez Aspa, Chiara Stoppa, Stefano Orlandi, Gianluca Di Lauro

set design by the students from the Set Design course at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, coordinated by Franca Nava

costumes and props from the Teatro La Fenice in Venice

technical director Carlo Pallieri

 

Women’s Choir of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice

Choirmaster Claudio Marino Moretti

 

Orchestra ensemble of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice

Conducted by Dario Garegnani

Percussion ensemble of the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice

voice Manuela Agnesini

narrating voice Umberto Curi

soloists and orchestra groups from the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice

conducted by Franco Massaro, Justine Rapaccioli, Michele Sacco

 

production La Biennale di Venezia, Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello of Venice, Fondazione Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Accademia di Belle Arti of Venice

 

The Don Giovanni by Mozart becomes Don Giovanni a Venezia, a totally new opera installation that inaugurates the 54th Festival and presents itself as a synthesis of the themes running through it. A concentration of many simultaneous events – musical, scenic, theatrical, visual – dispersed throughout the spaces of the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice and cyclically “switched on”, Don Giovanni a Venezia disrupts our perceptive habits and creates interference between different eras.

Conceived by director Luca Francesconi, Don Giovanni a Venezia is a singular experiment in production with young artists from the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello and the Accademia di Belle Arti who will measure themselves on the professional stage against the singers and musicians of one of the major opera theatres, the Teatro La Fenice, against the composers, soloists and actors involved in this operation. A complex stage organization, engaging over 130 artistic and technical professionals, made possible by the joint commitment of four Venetian institutions: the participants in this project by the Music Biennale are the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, which not only put its young musicians and composers to work, but also offered its historic headquarters at Palazzo Pisani in Campo Santo Stefano, one of the most fascinating Venetian palaces, as the venue for the performance; the Teatro La Fenice, which involved its entire choir and orchestra ensemble, and opened its storerooms to lend the costumes and props; and the Accademia di Belle Arti, which will create the sets for Palazzo Pisani.

Three scenes have been selected from the original opera by Mozart, three key scenes – the duel between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, the seduction of Zerlina, the death of Don Giovanni – which take place cyclically though shifted in time, like a non-synchronous loop, in three different places on the three different floors of Palazzo Pisani. Mozart’s three scenes, which serve as a “latch”, a refrainthat carries the spectator through the fabric of the opera, are interspersed with 8 original new pieces – commissioned to contemporary composers by the Biennale and by the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello – woven into the Mozartian structure of the opera to shed light on the relationship with tradition. “It’s as if Mozart’s three scenes were meteorites exploding in the ancient salons, in the loggias, in the porticoes, among the monumental statues, the stuccoes, the paintings, the inlaid doors, the frescoed ceilings of the Venetian palace – says Luca Francesconi. As if the characters from Mozart’s Don Giovanni emanated from the history-laden walls of this seventeenth-century palace and came alive in the midst of our present”.

The venue of the Conservatory of Venice, Palazzo Pisani in its entirety, will host this “labyrinth-opera”, for which the audience will promenade through the halls and the salons, will walk through the courts and loggias, will move down the halls and go up the stairs of this ancient building. This itinerary will lead to a new perceptive experience, in which space and time will appear suspended.

Tying together the threads of this highly particular mise-en-scène will be director Francesco Micheli (a long-time exponent of experimental lyric theatre, winner of the Premio Abbiati 2009 for Bianco Rosso e Verdiat the Teatro Lirico in Palermo), while the musical dramaturgy, the creation of a harmonic framework will be the responsibility of Michele Tadini, who will supervise the entire operation from a centralized audio and video control room, made possible by the extensive wiring system of the Conservatory.

The actual musical plot of Don Giovanni a Venezia is composed of a kaleidoscope of pieces, written by composers of different generations and backgrounds summoned by the Biennale to address the theme of opera: twenty-six year old Swedish composer Martina Tomner, the author of Tempelmusik; French composer Pierre Jodlowski, who conceived a triple video installation with The Ghost Women; Federico Troncatti who evokes the Italian archetype of myth, L’Ateisto Fulminato; Venetian composer Gabriella Zen who, with the complicity of Umberto Curi, wrote a philosophical melologue entitled Don Giovanni, variazioni sul mito; Marcello Filotei, who invents an improvised Don Giovanni, Walking Sax; Michele Tadini, the author of Requiem_#2065; Marco Marinoni and Francesco Zorzini, directly from the Conservatory of Venice, respectively with Black drop and Serenata d’addio.

Martina Tommer (Uppsala – Sweden, 1983) - She studied musicology at Lund University from 2001 to 2002, and then attended the Malmö Academy of Music, where she studied with Rolf Martinsson and Luca Francesconi, specializing in music arrangement, composition and music theory. She graduated in 2007.

She has participated in many composition projects with professional ensembles such as the Swedish Wind Ensemble and the Musica Vitae string orchestra. Meantime she continued to study at Malmö, attending post-graduate courses. In addition to composition, Martina Tomner also directs a choir and teaches music theory.

 

As a child I lived for several years in Växjö, a city in southern Sweden. This is a place that I associate with many of my memories, one of which is the Teleborg water tower. This water tower is famous locally for its peculiar (and surprising) acoustic properties, and is popularly known as “Ekotemplet”, “The Temple of the Echo”. I began to compose this work by first recording a large quantity of violin phrases under the water tower and I later analyzed the sound by computer with the Audiosculpt program. I then drew the material for my composition from these recorded sounds, mainly glissandos and pizzicatos, but melodic and harmonic fragments as well, and sounds with no determined pitch. My objective was to translate the incredible echo that resonates under the water tower into the language of a string orchestra, and then to modify this material and use it to build a musical form based on the slow transformation of different timbres, fragments of musical motifs and sonic textures.

Martina Tomner

 

Pierre Jodlowski (Toulouse – France, 1971) – After studying music at the Conservatory of Lyon and composition at IRCAM, he founded the éOle collective and the Novelum festival of Toulouse. His work has been presented in circuits outside of the field of classical music such as galleries, museums and theatres, because he is active in many fields, working on images, on the structures of interactive programming, on staging. Jodlowski advances the practice of “active” music in its physical (gestures, energy, space) and psychological dimension (evocation, memory, film dimension). He has collaborated with Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ictus, KNM, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Ars Nova, Proxima Centauri. He also collaborates with musicians such as percussionist Jean Geoffroy, flutist Cedric Jullion, pianist Wilhelm Latchoumia. He has recently performed with Roland Auzet(percussions) and Michel Portal (bass clarinet). His attention to other performance disciplines has led him to collaborate with visual artists, in particular with Vincent Meyer, David and Alain Coste Josseau. He has received commissions from IRCAM, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, CIRM, GRM, the Donaueschingen Festival, Radio France, GMEM Grame, the Siemens Foundation, the INTEGRA European project. He won the Prix Claude Arrieu SACEM in 2002 and was artist-in-residence at the Arts Academy of Berlin in 2003 and in 2004. His works have been published in part by Editions Jobert.

 

Ghost women. The project consists of three video installations made in collaboration with actress Manuela Agnesini and director Christophe Bergon. The idea is to confront the visitor with a female presence along the walls of the path that leads to the palace. This presence will act as a sort of ”guide” to illustrate the different phases of perception of the myth of Don Giovanni, both as a female presence that changes over time and space, using writing and a musical background positioned in relation to the entire project. Finally this presence should be perceived as a ghost, that moves in and out of the palace walls; a strange voice, that echoes words and feelings of the past to activate our memories and our understanding of the various artistic presentations.

Pierre Jodlowski

 

Federico Troncatti (Darfo Boario Terme – Italy, 1965) – He studied composition at the Conservatory of Brescia, where he graduated with Giancarlo Facchinetti in 1993; he also attended the two-year advanced training classes at the Scuola Civica di Milano (SCM) and the Arturo Toscanini Foundation in Parma, attending lectures and seminars held by Ivan Fedele, Alessandro Melchiorre, Beat Furrer, Franco Donatoni, Adriano Guarnieri, George Benjamin, Jack Body and Michel Jarrell. His compositions have been performed in many international festivals (Moscow, Amsterdam, Bremen, Leipzig, Bordeaux, Madrid, Milan and Venice); he has earned important acknowledgments in many international competitions including “Franco Evangelisti” in Rome and “Gustav Mahler” in Klagenfurt. He studied percussion with Andrea Dulbecco, conducting with Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli and jazz piano with Franco D’Andrea. He is published by Suvini Zerboni Milano, and has revised several works by Iannis Xenakis for Editions Salabert.

 

The connecting rooms 101 and 102 of the Conservatory of Venice, where Bruno Maderna taught for many years, are the scene of the perpetual dialectic game, in perennial motion between modernity and tradition, like between Don Giovanni and L’Ateisto Fulminato or, why not, between Maderna and Mozart. On the other hand, these are the spaces where Maderna worked, and where the Don Giovanni Project takes place, making this a mandatory conflict. Obviously the conflict is not a real one, because there is no doubt that there are no winners, or losers, but just a “game” between the parts, like a playful drama. Just as the chosen title, an archaic Italian version based on the Spanish play by Tirso de Molina, symbolizes the archetype of Don Juan, tradition as opposed to the more modern version by Mozart, the Maderna series chosen as the leitmotif of the entire piece, partially articulated around some of the harmonic solutions found in Mozart’s opera, symbolizes modernity. And even the form that is used, the rondo combined with a theme and variations, also allows formal play, either linked to tradition, or perilously launched towards more experimental solutions. As if frequencies from different eras continued to meet and interweave in these places, but with equally innovative intentions, Maderna like Mozart, interferences of modulating frequencies over carrying frequencies, as if Maderna was modulating Mozart or vice versa, so the disposition of the instrumental formation in the two Madernian, yet also Mozartian, spaces, simply reinforces this play, with the resonance of echoes, and the contraposition of beats. The electronic part is achieved through the generation of MIDI messages with self-generating algorithms, filtered in deferred editing.

Federico Troncatti

 

Marco Marinoni (Monza – Italy, 1974) – In 2007 he graduated in electronic music under Alvise Vidolin at the Conservatory in Venice where, in 2009, he earned his Second-level experimental academic diploma in electronic music (live electronics and sound direction). He is currently attending the second year of the experimental second-level two-year program in New composition teaching under Corrado Pasquotti. He has composed contemporary music Since 1999. His interests include contemporary classical instrumental chamber music, rock improvisation, video-art, electro-acoustic music, acusmatic music and live electronics. He won the Prix du Trivium at the 29th Concours International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Électroacoustiques – Bourges, 2002; he was a finalist at the International Gaudeamus Composition Prize in 2001 and in 2003. Also in 2003, he was one of the composers selected for the project What’s Next by Nuova Consonanza. He won the Second Call for Electroacoustic Works organized by the Federazione CEMAT and included in the CD Punti di Ascolto 2005 distributed by Auditorium Edizioni, and first prize at the First Composition for Hyperviolin Competition – Genoa 2007. He is a member of the SIMC – Società Italiana Musica Contemporanea. His musical scores are edited by Ars Publica and by Taukay. He lives and works in Finale Ligure.

 

In astro-physics, “gutta nigra” (or “dark ligament”, “black drop”, “ligament noir”, “Tropfen”) is a name given to a particular phenomenon regarding the deformation of profiles, visible to the naked eye to a greater or lesser measure and relative to the distance and intensity of light around the apparent or real point of contact between two bodies. The cause of this phenomenon may be attributed to the visual impairment known as “astigmatism”, which causes the diameter of the pupil to shrink to its smallest when observing strong light and the image of the infinitely distant point of light on the retina takes the form of a vertical or horizontal line segment. According to the Sturm theory, each point of light, on the retina of an astigmatic, does not produce the image of a point but a more or less oblique line. Generally the direction of the segment is said by the observers to lie on the line connecting the centres of the stars, but if in fact this does occasionally happen, it is not necessarily so, because it depends on the direction of the line of maximum deformation of the observing eye. In advanced stages of the phenomenon, admitting that the line joining the centres of the bodies is oblique in any case, the ligament will become oblique. A more careful examination of the phenomenon demonstrates that the deformation provoked by astigmatism is subordinated to the relationship between the intensity of light in the image and that of the background it is projected against.

Marco Marinoni

 

Gabriella Zen  (Venice – Italy, 1957) – She completed her training in the study of music and humanities, earning Diplomas in piano (1977), choir music and choir direction (1979), and composition (1985) at the Conservatorio C. Pollini in Padua, and graduated with a degree in Literature, with a thesis in the History of Music, from the Università Cà Foscari in Venice (1982). Her training in composition, which began at the Conservatory with Wolfango Dalla Vecchia, continued at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Franco Donatoni (1982 and 1983). In 1986 her chamber work Don Perlimplino e Belisa nel Giardino, to a libretto by Garcìa Lorca, was a finalist at the Karl Maria von Weber Composition Competition in Dresden. In 1993, the Arditti Quartet performed her Liederkreis quartet at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The same year she was a finalist at the Olympia International Composition Competition in Athens, with the piece Salmi for solo soprano. She represented Italy at the 3rd Workshop for EU Artists organized in 2003 by the European Parliament in Oslip (Austria): her piece In der Wueste for mezzo-soprano, contralto and percussions was performed during the final concert and recorded by the ORF. In 2004 she participated – along with ten other European composers – in the composition of the suite 11-Eleven, commissioned to commemorate the victims of terrorism and to celebrate the entry of the new Nations into the European Community. Also in 2004 she participated as the representative of Italy – with In der Wueste – in the Concert of New European Music, which inaugurated the Sala Rossi of the newly reconstructed Teatro La Fenice. Canzona Magnetica (2006) and Die Linien des Lebens… (2007) was enthusiastically acclaimed by both critics and public. In January 2010, the Sale Apollinee at the Teatro La Fenice were the venue for the performance of her video-melologue Il Regno dei Fanes, with a libretto based on the letters from the warfront written by Giuseppe and Eugenio Galante (1915-1917). She has collaborated with many important directors in Italian theatre, including Gianfranco De Bosio, Carlo Cecchi, Bepi Morassi, Stefano Pagin and Damiano Michielotto. Since 1981 she has collaborated steadily with the Teatro La Fenice di Venezia as a Maestro Collaboratore.

 

Philosopher Umberto Curi and composer Gabriella Zen have explored a totally innovative form to address the myth of Don Giovanni, and so conceived the idea of this “philosophical melologue”, which is directly related to “Là ci darem la mano”, sung at regular intervals on the loggia on the same floor. Progressively 7 variations, at each encounter with the piece by Mozart (which in our collective imagination is “the” Love duet, whereas upon closer observation it describes nothing but a sleazy craving) slowly change colour from the mythical idea of “enchantment of love” to the “disenchantment of love”, with a poetic focalization on the word “mano”, hand, thus repeating the dramatic scenario that leads from “Là ci darem la mano” to “Dammi la mano in pegno!//Che gelo è questo mai?” Over the instrumental coda of each variation, Professor Curi, like a melologue, will “recite” his philosophical etymological reflections on the concept of hand, and between one variation and another, as silence falls, he will have time for statements regarding the myth of Don Giovanni, which has been his favourite subject of philosophical investigation over the past 15 years. In their intent to recreate the poetic suggestions of “live electronics” by mere acoustic means, the variations elaborate musical materials drawn from “Là ci darem la mano”, from the previous recitativo and the finale, all situations that mention the fingers or the hand (which, according to the Greeks, were the source of the essence of life and love).

Gabriella Zen

 

Marcello Filotei (Rome – Italy, 1966) – He graduated in piano, composition and electronic music at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, under Giorgio Nottoli and Riccardo Bianchini, among others. After finishing his studies, he dedicated himself to the exploration of contemporary musical languages, with particular attention to new technologies. In addition to his production for traditional groups, his catalogue also includes several works with the participation of electronics. In particular, he was interested in the interaction between acoustic instruments and machines, maintaining a deep sense of form borrowed from tradition. His works have been performed in many contemporary music programs in Italy and abroad. In 2000, the Orchestra di Roma e del Lazio commissioned Il Sogno di Arsenio, a single act for the theatre which was staged at the Teatro Valle in Rome, with Piera degli Esposti as the narrating voice. In 2001 the Cantiere internazionale d’arte di Montepulciano commissioned Traghetti. In its orchestral version, Traghetti was performed, recorded and published for Rai Trade by the Radio Orchestra of Sofia. His Adagio for piano has been performed in many international venues, including the Thailand Cultural Centre in Bangkok. His music was selected for the Italian Pavilion of the Shanghai 2010 Expo as an example of new directions in composition in Italy. In 2009 he was a guest of the International Electroacoustic Music Festival (Emufest) with Automa I for bass instrument and live electronics. He has received commissions from the Orchestra Haydn di Trento e Bolzano, from the Orchestra della Toscana, from the ensemble El Cimarron, the ensemble Ars Ludi, the Ars Trio from Rome. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Nuova Consonanza. In 2008 he founded the “Strumenti di Pace” international composition competition, which he directs. He is published by Rai Trade.

 

Walking Sax (un Don Giovanni improvvisato), for tenor sax and eight-channel magnetic tape is a round-trip journey from indefinite desire (air) to unsatisfied eroticism (sound). The saxophonist moves between these two extremes, from ethereal emissions to precise intonations, both physically, as he climbs a staircase that symbolically never ends and reads the score painted on the walls. Along the way there are eight speakers, air gradually is transformed into sound, but then the mechanism is reversed and everything continues to change in order to remain the same: starting and ending points raise the same questions. Finally after little more than six minutes the soloist disappears up the last ramp, but soon reappears below, to repeat his part as a serial seducer, always the same, always and exclusively uphill. Electronics accompany his journey reminding him periodically where he comes from, without being able to tell him where to go. The saxophonist is given the freedom to improvise, but this too is nothing but an illusion: the structure of chronometric references is impossible to escape, and at each point only the elements in the score can be used, the same developed by the electronics, following the vicious circle air-flatterzunge-sound-flatterzunge-air. Sometimes provocative timbres filter down, as an invitation to go up, the seduction of sound attracts the soloist, but it’s only a trick: “come, there’s worse”.

Marcello Filotei

 

Michele Tadini (Milan, Italy 1964) – An exuberant and multiform musician, he graduated in guitar and composition at the Conservatory in Milan, where he studied with Sandro Gorli and Giacomo Manzoni; he specialized with Franco Donatoni at the Chigiana in Siena, where he earned a diploma and won a scholarship to attend the Conservatory in Paris. Other important milestones in his training were his studies in electronic music, his attendance at the courses in Darmstadt and an internship at IRCAM in Paris. He taught electronic music first at the higher education courses of the Accademia della Fondazione Toscanini and then at the Istituto Tempo Reale in Florence. A member of the AGON centre in Milan since 1990, he later became the director general and production manager, collaborating in the electronic part of many musical productions by authors such as Corghi, Manzoni, Donatoni, Maderna, Manca and many others. As a composer, Tadini has not produced an extensive catalogue so far, but his works have been performed in prestigious Italian and European programs. He has also composed scores for many plays, music for sound installations, ballets, theatre-music production and videos. The characteristic of Tadini’s music is its lush quality and the freshness of the sound he invents, which reveals a substantial creative serenity, and is very pleasing to the ear. He has a conscious and profound relationship with electronic instruments and computers, from which the music of this composer from Milan constantly draws new life. The latest compositions by Michele Tadini include: This Fragments (2008), for five voices and Walking through Boundaries (2008), for ensemble, live electronics and VJ.

 

The harmonic material around which this piece for chorus and electronics is built is also the basis for other compositions along the path of the labyrinth opera they were written for. The material develops the D minor dominant chord from the prelude of Mozart’s Don Giovanniwhich, enormously dilated over time, will greet the audience in Campo Pisani. The spatial element (for the performance of the piece, the choir and the electronics will be distributed between the staircase and the second courtyard), the symbolic-narrative context and the tight relationship with the other installations along the itinerary are the structural elements of the writing. The piece is both a farewell and a celebration. 2065 is the sum of the number of seductions listed by Leporello in the aria of the catalogue.

Michele Tadini

 

Francesco Zorzini (Italy, 1980) – A pianist and composer, he began his studies with Davide Liani and graduated in piano with Giorgio Lovato and in composition under Riccardo Vaglini at the Conservatory in Venice. He has performed many concerts as a soloist and with chamber groups, and collaborates as an accompanist at the piano in master classes and competitions. He is particularly active as an accompanist for opera practice, working with the greatest names on the Italian and international scene: Raina Kabaivanska, Stefan Schreiber, Francesca Scaini, Paola Lazzarini with whom he also shares an intense concert schedule. He is the permanent director of the Corale Caminese at Camino al Tagliamento and I Cantori del Friuli, a choir group from Udine. As a composer, he recently wrote the hymn De nativitate Domini based on words by San Paolino d’Aquileia, performed to great acclaim in the most important churches in Friuli. He has published the pieces Studio di propagazione and Intermezzo with the Ars Publica publishing company. He teaches piano, harmony and analysis in several music schools in the Friuli region.

 

The material for the composition of Serenata d’addio, excluding some of the more irregular central fragments, consists in chords whose inert sequence reveals a distant essential melodic line. The substantial simplicity of the structure in the pieces evokes absence – hence the “addio” – and the silence of an answer that never came. If musicologist Jean-Victor Hocquard greeted “Deh vieni alla finestra” (the serenade that Don Giovanni dedicates to an absent/imaginary maid) as the expression of the “sclerosis of a heart that has lost its ability to love”, the Serenata d’addio sadly captures this suggestive spirit, appearing as the detached song of someone who has lost the capacity to sing.

Francesco Zorzini.