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SALZBURG FESTIVAL summer 1999 |
news release |
 the webzine that celebrates MUSIC |
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SALZBURG FESTIVAL summer 1999 |
news release |
the webzine that celebrates MUSIC |
| 1999 SALZBURG FESTIVAL OPENS WITH
WORLD PREMIERE OF CRONACA DEL LUOGO (Chronicle of the Place) A NEW OPERA COMPOSED BY LUCIANO BERIO FOR THE INCOMPARABLE DRAMATIC SOPRANO HILDEGARD BEHRENS AND FOR A SPECIAL PLACE CALLED THE FELSENREITSCHULE Libretto by Talia Pecker Berio In Italian with German and English surtitles First performance: July 24, 1999 at 7:00 p.m. Other performances: July 27, 31 and August 3 A world premiere is always a special event. But the premiere of Luciano Berio's new opera Cronaca del luogo promises to be special in more ways than one. Consisting of a Prologue and 5 Scenes set within a biblical landscape, it is the renowned composer's celebration of a special place and an extraordinary voice, through his own unique form of music-theatre called azione musicale. |
 The
Place Photo: © O. Anrather / Salzburg Festival |
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The special place is the theatre itself - the Festival complex's Felsenreitschule. A space carved out of a rock on a mountainside, it has always fascinated the composer as a marvellous, natural setting for his ever nascent ideas of what modern music-theatre might be. It is no wonder that in this opera commissioned by the Salzburg Festival - Luciano Berio's first work to be staged in this theatre - the Felsenreitschule itself plays a central role. So, what makes the Felsenreitschule (Summer Riding School) so special, particularly in this work? In the baroque era (the 17th century) when this rock of the Mönchsberg was first quarried to build the cathedral that still stands today, the audience watched riding displays from the three tiers of galleries that now form the wall that curves around the stage. It is the wall that makes the Felsenreitschule an exciting place for Berio's kind of music-theatre: its seeming rigidity indulges his creative genius, allowing both his music and his drama to happen on two planes - the vertical (the wall) and the horizontal (the stage). The wall serves a multiplicity of functions. It is at once prison and refuge, a depository of memories - both hostile and friendly, at times evocative of the enemy and of grief and destruction, at other times recalling love and hope, home and community. It is a wall of music into which the traditional orchestra pit has disappeared and from which radiate alternating sounds of harmony and strife, of soft intimacy and maddening frenzy. It is an acoustic wall from within which Berio, indefatigable explorer and experimentalist, strives to effect a miscegenation of natural sound and digital technology, amplifying and yet preserving the naturalness of the human voice and of each musical instrument. Thus, the work's most dominant visible element is the musically ever-changing wall of immutable memories. This wall and the stage or the piazza onto which unfold these memories - of Jericho, of the tower of Babel, of events set against the vast biblical landscape - define the place or the luogo of the azione musicale, chronicling through sound and light the varying manifestations of the presence of God in human life. God (the Hebrew homonym/synonym for place), in whom change and immutability reside without contradiction.  |
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| A joint news
release of the Salzburg Festival
and © FanFaire, the webzine that celebrates
music. 1999. All rights reserved. |
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Cronaca del luogo: Composed by Luciano Berio, libretto by Talia Pecker Berio; Musical direction: Sylvain Cambreling; Stage direction: Claus Guth; Stage set and costumes: Christian Schmidt; Choir direction: Erwin Ortner; Cast: Hildegard Behrens ("R"), Frode Olsen (General), Matthias Klink(Phanuel), David Moss (Nino), Monica Bacelli (Orvid), Urban Malmberg (Uomo senza età); Chorus: Arnold Schoenberg Chor and Tölzer Knabenchor; Orchestral soloists: Gabriele Cassone (Trumpet), Christian Lindberg (Trombone), Michele Marasco (Alto flute), Ernesto Molinari (Clarinet), David Moss (Percussion), Igor Polesitsky (Violin), Georg Schulz (Accordion),Folco Vichi (Tastiera Midi); Sound space: Klangforum Wien and Tempo Reale, Firenze.
| The
Hildegard Behrens pages. |
The Lehmann Ring Award | The first piano rehearsal | At the Felsenreitschule |
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