South - North

Two-act opera for voices, percussions, harmonic whirlies,
hang, pedonium*, wind and foley art

Fanny & Alexander

Teatro Comunale, Modena

16/10/2009 ,  17:00  
17/10/2009 ,  17:00  

music by Mirto Baliani, John Dowland, Gérard Grisey, Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis.
ideation Luigi de Angelis and Chiara Lagani direction, scenes, lights Luigi de Angelis dramaturgy Chiara Lagani
sound design Mirto Baliani costumes Chiara Lagani and Sofia Vannini with Chiara Lagani and Fiorenza Menni and with Mauro Milone, Davide Sacco
vocal ensemble Melodi Cantores directed by Elena Sartori (cantus and direction Elena Sartori, alto Roberta Guidi, tenor Sergio Martella, bass Decio Biavati) percussions Nextime Ensemble (Danilo Grassi, Lisa Bartolini, Antonio Somma, Federico Zammarini), Mirto Baliani
singing and preverbal sounds Roberta Guidi foley artists Fiorenza Menni, Mauro Milone, Davide Sacco
scenery project Nicola Fagnani (Atelier Operaovunque) scenery realization Atelier Operaovunque with Giovanni Cavalcoli, Marco Cavalcoli, Danilo Dell’Oca, Nicola Fagnani, Luca Karpati, Andrea Lepri, Marco Parollo, Amir Sharif-pour
scenery assistants Alessio Alonne, Chiara Castello, Francesca De Gobbi scenery and technical consultant Pietro Babina vocal training (functional method of voice) Roberta Guidi tailoring Laura Graziani Alta Moda and Marta Benini with Sofia Vannini portrait of Oz Zapruderfilmmakersgroup echo sonar Umberto Biagini project and programmation IMM (interface man-machine) of the pedonium Mirko Fabbri
Dorothy's text South Chiara Lagani with Fiorenza Menni, North Chiara Lagani
production assistant Marian Vanzetto production office Ifat Nesher for Canvas Management with Marco Cavalcoli promotion Valentina Ciampi, Marco Molduzzi and Ifat Nesher eyes office Lorenzo Donati logistics Sergio Carioli administration Marco Cavalcoli and Debora Pazienza with thanks to Danjel Andersson for Perfect Performance (Stockholm), Laura Barenghi, Simone Caputo, Andrea Di Cioccio, Tomas Kutinjač, Massimo Paci with special thanks to Barbara Boninsegna and Dino Sommadossi with the whole staff of Centrale Fies, Caterina Marrone and Rodolfo Sacchettini production Opera Futura Laboratori per un Nuovo Teatro Musicale, Teatro Comunale di Ferrara in co-production with Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Teatro Comunale di Modena, Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia with the contribution of Regione Emilia Romagna Assessorato alla Cultura Sport e Progetto giovani and Ministero della Gioventù in the context of Accordo di Programma Quadro GECO - Giovani Evoluti e Consapevoli in collaboration with Centrale Fies (Dro - Trento), Les Brigittines (Bruxelles), Music Biennale Zagreb (Zagreb) Opera Futura Laboratori per un Nuovo Teatro Musicale is a project conceived and coordinated by Giordano Montecchi.

*electronic musical instrument with a big floor-like keyboard practicable by one or more musicians

Running time
South 1h 25'
intermission 15'
North 1h

South - North is a diptych, or a two-act opera, the new production that's part of the multi-year project Fanny & Alexander is dedicating to “The wonderful Wizard of Oz” by Frank L. Baum.
After Dorothy. Disconcert for Oz, where an emblematic cyclone, the well-known one from the Wizard's tale, became the generating figure of a proper new model of musical work - inspired by Cage's Europeras - blending several sound layers into one level of concomitances, South - North intends to continue and radicalize this very same research line, availing itself, also in this case, of live performances by some musicians (percussionists and singers) and actors.
The protagonist, Dorothy, a kind of avatar for the audience in this journey through the world of Oz, is catapulted by her cyclone South and then North of this fantastic universe where her journey/adventure takes place. They are two allusive and opposite places or winds, mysterious, hard to define: at first they seem to be common theatres, concert halls, where an opera or performance takes place; soon they are transfigured into proper autonomous universes, places-organs of a more complex body where every single sign, every visual auditory tactile olfactory trace always becomes a new gradient of the overall temperature and of the fundamental request which Dorothy, the protagonist, expresses by her own path and crossing.
South will sink Dorothy, and the audience with her, into a deep night, a percussive and whirling darkness from which a new language of beating will arise, the rhythmic one, the lunar nocturne and animal language of the Witch of that wind, a creature maybe born from that world of sound where Dorothy immersed herself and was transfigured. Whereas North puts Dorothy in relation with a complex synaesthetic device, giving birth to a proper musical universe based on the perceptive mystery of the languages of senses, the connotative ones, which will be crossed, “played”, practised by the protagonist, up till the spasmodic, panic coincidence of her very being with the light, the sound, the smell, the temperature of that wind.
The project intends to revisit and reconsider the rhetorical mechanisms of musical works in order to reread a key myth of Western literature, starting from a varied contemporary repertoire which is revisited according to the new sound organism that will be created in layers.
The modalities by which the diptych will be carried out are based on the complementarity of organic realities and groups with specific and differentiated vocations such as the three historical theatres of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio Emilia, the Opera Theatre in Bologna, the theatre companies Fanny & Alexander and Teatrino Clandestino, the musical ensembles Melodi Cantores and Nextime, the scenery workshop Opera Ovunque, the agency Canvas Management, in the context of a redefinition of the musical production's founding elements in a dynamic sense.

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