http://www.

kairos-
KAIROS Musikproduktion
music.com/index.html

releases information distribution press links

< >

SALVATORE LUCI MIE TRADITRICI

SCIARRINO Annette Stricker, Otto Katzameier, Kai Wessel, Simon Jaunin,
CD 0012222KAI Klangforum Wien, Beat Furrer

The content of the 70-minute chamber opera by Salvatore Sciarrino is

the real story of the composer and renaissance prince Gesualdo -
who, driven by passion and a thirst for vengeance, murders his wife
and her lover in dramatic manner. Distant and inaccessible.
Fascination between eroticism and death.

Inhalt der siebzigmintigen Kammeroper von Salvatore Sciarrino ist

die reale Geschichte des komponierenden Rennaissancefrsten
Gesualdo - der, von Leidenschaft und Rachegefhlen getrieben, auf
dramatische Weise, seine Frau und deren Liebhaber ermordet. Fern
und unerreichbar. Ein klangliches Faszinosum zwischen Erotik und
Tod.

artwork: Jakob Gasteiger

Lincoln Center Festival
2001: Sciarrino's Luci mie
Traditrici
By Philip Anson / July 12, 2001
On the Aisle

Salvatore Sciarrino: Luci mie Traditrici

Lincoln Center Festival
July 12, 2001

The Lincoln Center Festival's most earnest musical theater offering this summer is 55
year old Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino's 75 minute chamber opera Luci mie
Traditrici (translated as " "My Treacherous Eyes"), a lean, minimal work from 1996 that
is ethereal, intense, monotonous, and fascinating.

Sciarrino's trademark is his subdued instrumentation. He has said, "The traditional

orchestra in opera is dead. The function of the orchestra is no longer to accompany the
voices. The voice is everything. It is the center. It is the world of opera. The orchestra
creates around the voices only the sounds that the characters can hear."

Thus the composer limits himself to a 22-member orchestra of violin, viola, cello, bass,
flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, sax, and percussion. Most of these
instruments never make their traditional sounds. Instead, they are blown, tapped, and
rubbed in a variety of unconventional ways to elicit a palette of subtle whispers,
squeaks, hisses, sighs, and clicks. The brass players exhale through their instruments,
producing the sound of wind. The violinists press one string until it produces a high
electronic squeak. All these sounds are applied sparingly and in counterpoint to the
sung/spoken dialogue, to provide an allusive atmospheric accompaniment. The most
traditional music comes in three intermezzos based on baroque music by Claude Le
Jeune. As in Britten's Peter Grimes, these intermezzos are among the most accessible
part of the opera.

The two-act, eight-scene libretto is based on Giacinto Andrea Cicognini's 1664 play "Il
Tradimento per l'Onore", based on the life of composer Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of
Venosa. The play tells of a jealous Duke (sung by Austrian baritone Paul Armin
Edelmann ) who kills his wife (sung by German soprano Annette Stricker) and her lover
(the Guest, sung by British countertenor Lawrence Zazzo) after they are betrayed by a
Servant (John Bowen). This skeletal libretto with no subplots, poetry, or digression is
well-suited to Sciarrino's bony music. The classical Italian is sung/spoken in short ,
arhythmic syllabic bursts with sliding pitch and volume. The four singers were perfectly
comfortable and adept with this difficult technique.

Production values were high. The single fixed set by Roland Aeschlimann was a white
hill cut by five jagged saw blades moving up and down at irregular intervals. The small
stage was surrounded by a semicircular scrim that served to isolate the action from the
audience. Blackouts (or rather greyouts) divided the scenes. The orchestra was tucked
under one side of the stage, which made it awkward for the conductor to cue the
singers, but the ensemble was flawless.

As usual with the best European productions, one was impressed by the superb
craftmanship reflected in materials scrupulously cut, painted, and fitted with such
precision and elegance that it made the average Metropolitan Opera production look
dumpy (to say nothing of the shlock frequently foisted upon Opra de Montreal
audiences). Costumes were chic boutique fashions that any socialite would love to wear.

Direction by choreographer Trisha Brown was suprisingly muted, almost incidental: a

few robotic postures and Robert Wilsonesque hand gestures that suited Sciarrino's
esthetic. There was little of the poetic imagination seen in her choreography of
Monteverdi's "Orfeo," which wowed us at the Brooklyn Academy of Music a couple of
years ago.

This co-production with Brussels's Thtre de la Monnaie and France's Opra de Rouen
was a bold and challenging offering which lasted just long enough to make its point. By
the end of the show, one's appetite for Sciarrino was satisfied. The experiment was
interesting, but one would not want to hear it again too soon.

The Lincoln Center Festival continues through July 29.

> Lincoln Center Festival 2001.

 "blink scrounch blonk"
camille de rijck

Salvatore Sciarrino est un compositeur

autodidacte. Bien sr, cela ne le singularise pas
trop ; comme disent certains compositeurs trs
apprcis de l'quipe du Forum Opra " on
n'apprend pas inventer ". Sa musique est
reconnaissable entre mille, elle ne s'impose
aucune contrainte, elle n'appartient aucune
cole, elle ne dcoule que d'un certain neo
naturalisme qui ne serait propre qu' Sciarrino.
Mais toutes ces (a-)nominations sont bien
floues et superflues, ce qui compte rellement
c'est d'assimiler le fait que - chez Sciarrino - la
musique tient lieu d'onomatope.

Le thme de Luci Mie traditrici tendait un pige

colossal son propre auteur, celui qui aurait
consist parodier l'criture musicale de
Gesualdo. Sciarrino passe bien videmment
ct sans sourciller. La pice prend cependant
forme de madrigal, mais l'intention n'a rien de
parodique, elle coule mme de source.
L'criture vocale est dconcertante de
simplicit, de l'lgie initiale pour contre tnor,
suave et
envole au recitar cantando mi vitesse
omniprsent dans la pice. Sciarrino a invent
une vocalit qui prendrait place entre le
staccato montverdien et les
vocalises trilles de Rossini. Elle demande aux
interprtes une agilit vocale accomplie et
sollicite toutes les couleurs de leur instrument.

Quand on chante, l'orchestre badine. Dans les

jardins du chteau, on devine un oiseau
sournois, on devine le souffle du valet espion,
les pulsations cardiaques, le
vent. Musique illustrative plus que narrative,
d'une lgret et d'une modestie telles que ce
sont les chanteurs qui font office d'orchestre et
les quelque quinze instrumentistes qui tiennent
lieu de solistes. Les violons jouent
gnralement sur une seule corde, la plus
aigu, pince et peine effleure. " C'est
Sciarrino lui-mme qui a enseign ses gestes
musicaux l'orchestre ", explique Kazushi Ono,
directeur musical de la dernire production
bruxelloise de l'oeuvre.

Entre les scnes fleurissent des passages

orchestraux purs qui renvoient explicitement
la Renaissance ; une fois encore c'est la
couleur plus que la pte qui oriente l'auditeur.

Auditeur en fin de compte charm en juger

par le succs que l'oeuvre a recueilli chacune
de ses sorties. Nouvelle fort rjouissante au
demeurant vu qu' aucun moment elle ne se
soucie d'accessibilit,.

Disons que sa lisibilit coule de source.

 Salvatore, Andrea Carlo : un trio
madrigalesco-sanglant
camille de rijck

" Luci mie traditrici " ( mes prunelles tratresses) voil ce qui s'crie la duchesse
Malaspina, perdue, quand elle aperoit dans son jardin celui que le livret se
contentera de baptiser l'Ospite ; un regard aura suffi, non pas pour branler l'amour
inconditionnel qu'elle voue au duc, mais pour accorder ce bel inconnu un
rendez-vous galant proximit de la grille du chteau. Tout commence pourtant par
une honnte promenade bucolique entre poux amoureux. Dans les jardins du
chteau, le Duc indique la duchesse une rose cache, celle-ci, merveille, en
voulant la cueillir, se plante une pine dans le doigt. La vue du sang de son
pouse, ainsi frappe cruellement par une fleur perfide, prcipite le bon Duc dans un
sommeil soudain, sorte de syncope d'o il ne sortira qu'aprs maintes caresses et
paroles rassurantes de sa tendre. Tous deux se relvent et quittent la scne en
dclamant de concert ces paroles contradictoires : " l'amour rend si fort, l'amour
rend si fragile ". Pendant ce premier duo, un serviteur qui se cache dans une
coin du jardin observe, jaloux, les deux poux, visiblement terrasss par l'amour
coupable et tacite qu'il voue la duchesse. La deuxime scne est celle des regards
voque un peu plus tt. Deux jeunes gens s'observent, tombent amoureux et
maudissent leurs yeux. Sciarrino se permet dans son livret une
passion innocente qui provoque la perte des deux personnages par sa simple
intention. Le serviteur qui piait dj ses matres au premier tableau est toujours
l au second ainsi qu'au troisime o il dnoncera sa matresse au Duc qui -
boulevers - se rsigne planifier l'assassinat des deux amants. Rsolution
dicte par l'usage plus que par la colre. Au quatrime tableau, la duchesse -
surprise par le duc dans ses amours perfides - pleure sa culpabilit ; son mari lui
fait part du pardon qu'il lui accorde, l'entrecoupant tout de mme de remarques
amres. La duchesse se dclare prte mourir d'amour pour le duc, celui-ci
invoque cette promesse pour la conduire au dernier tableau devant un lit
baldaquin o il dit que la mort attend la flonne. D'abord rsigne, la duchesse se
rvolte devant la perspective de mourir, le duc insiste, lui rappelle sa promesse et la
presse d'carter les rideaux du lit. Derrire ceux-ci se trouve poignard et
froid le jeune amant, la duchesse son tour se laisse transpercer par la lame du
duc, c'est ainsi que s'achve l'histoire.

A la base de cette tragdie splendidement tlphone se trouve une pice tombe

dans l'oubli le plus total : Il Tradimento per l'honnore. Sciarrino, victime d'un trs
grave accident de voiture, aurait dcouvert cette pice de Cicognini (1664) sur son
lit d'hpital, dans une vielle anthologie du thtre italien. On ne sait pas
grand chose de la vie de Cicognini, si ce n'est que sa pice a t retrouve en 1911
par le philosophe Benedetto Croce sur une liste de livres vous l'index
librorum prohibitorum. Cette mise l'index d'une pice vieille de plusieurs sicles et
qui ne traite - priori - d'aucun sujet religieux s'explique assez difficilement.
Pia Janke a pourtant une analyse intressante du problme : " Il tradimento per
l'honore, qui voque le dsir sexuel, la coercition et le double adultre, la ruse,
la perfidie devait tre encore trop choquante, tout du moins face la morale
religieuse, pour que l'glise puisse l'oublier si facilement. Elle s'effora donc de
proscrire une oeuvre ressentie comme rpugnante, voire insupportable, une
poque o elle passait en revue la tradition littraire l'aune d'une pense
nouvelle et claire : ce qui avait choqu c'tait l'absence de style et le mauvais
got, l'rotsime cru, la franchise, et surtout l'indiffrence morale de l'oeuvre de
Cicognini "

Ce qu'il y a de vraiment passionnant dans cette pice de Cicognini, c'est Sciarrino

lui-mme qui l'a soulign. Cinquante ans avant la publication de la pice, un
fait-divers sanglant branlait la rpublique de Venise : le prince Gesualdo, clbre
madrigaliste, assassinait sa femme et l'amant de celle-ci. Il est tonnant que
personne avant Sciarrino n'ait fait le rapprochement entre ces deux vnements tant
les deux trames semblent proche. Ce Tradimento per l'honore mettrait
donc en scne un des drames les plus macabres et les plus connus de l'histoire de
la criminologie musicale.

Alors qu'il allait mettre un terme la composition de son opra, Sciarrino apprit que
Schnittke montait Vienne une oeuvre intitule " Gesualdo ". Il se prcipita
donc sur la partition et vit - rassur - que le tratement des deux oeuvres n'avait -
dramatiquement et musicalement - rien de commun. La petite thorie
dlicieuse de Sciarrino ne serait donc pas dflore par un autre " grand ".
Cependant, peu avant la publication de Luci Mie Traditrici, un ouvrage (Il principe
dei musici) vint confirmer le rapprochement qu'avait imagin Sciarrino. Par souci de
lgret le compositeur supprima donc toute allusion explicite Gesualdo
dans son livret et changea le titre qui la base devait tre " Gesualdo " (tout
simplement) par ces fameuses " prunelles tratresses ".
Zeitgenssische Oper Berlin
"Luci mie traditrici", together with "Amore e Psyche", "Perseo e Andromeda" and "Lohengrin", is
one of the highly successful operas by Salvatore Sciarrino.

The plot of this chamber opera is based on the authentic story of the Renaissance composer
Gesualdo who had his wife murdered out of jealousy. The theme of the work is the transience of
love. On one days morning a man and his wife, Count and Countess, invoke their eternal love. At
mid-day the Countess is gripped by the passion for a guest to whom she gives herself away. In the
evening the Count forgives her and she returns. In the night, as she opens the curtain to her bed in
the presence of her husband, she sees on it the body of her lover. The Count then kills her, and,
stabbed by her husbands dagger, she collapses over her murdered lover.

For this love story of a single day Sciarrino creates a form of music which expresses the finest
nuances of feeling of the human soul. In parallel to the condensing of time of the original drama, the
language of the music drama appears as a crystallization of the feelings of love. The language of
the lovers sounds like a continuing implosion in the narrowness of their intimacy. In this work the
language of passion gives birth to a kind of singing hitherto unknown to us.

Salvatore Sciarrino
Operas for a new century
The Lincoln Center presents three new works, including Philip Glass' White
Raven.

By JOHN FLEMING
St. Petersburg Times,
published July 22, 2001

NEW YORK -- Nothing gets the cultural temperature rising

like a new opera, even if the track record of such projects
in recent years is woefully mixed. And when the opera is
the latest from Philip Glass, you have the making of a
genuine event.
So The White Raven was a big deal, the centerpiece of [Photo: AP]
The cast of The White Raven,
Lincoln Center Festival 2001, which also presented commissioned by the Portuguese
government to celebrate explorers
several concerts of other Glass works. In fact, since it was of the 15th century, included Yuri
Batukov, left, as the King and Ana
by Glass, the U.S. premiere probably drew as much Paula Russo as the Queen.
attention from occasional operagoers as from people who
can define coloratura. Purists hate his repetitive, trance-
inducing music, but he has many fans outside the usual opera audience.
Glass' new opera bowled me over when I attended its final performance a week ago.
But, in some ways, I suspect the impression it made won't be as lasting as that of two
other new opera/musical theater works on the festival agenda. If these didn't have the
immediate visceral punch, the sheer sexiness of an eagerly anticipated work from
America's most famous living composer, each possessed a singular look and sound that
stuck in the mind.
Edda: Viking Tales of Lust, Revenge and Family turns an ancient Norse saga of gods,
heroes and giants into a haunting piece of musical theater, conceived by Benjamin
Bagby, who also performed it with members of his medieval music ensemble,
Sequentia. Luci Mie Traditrici (My Treacherous Eyes) is an opera about love and murder
whose remarkable score by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino was about silence as
much as sound (recalling, for me, a remark by Miles Davis that the way to listen to music
is to listen to the rests between the notes).
The three new operas all took place during the opening week of the sixth annual
summer festival at Lincoln Center, the performing arts complex on Manhattan's Upper
West Side that is home to the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, New
York City Opera and New York City Ballet the rest of the year. The festival, which runs
through next weekend, casts its net widely with other programming that ranges from a
minifestival of plays by Harold Pinter (another master of silences in his spare, sculpted
dialogue) to a series of concerts by African pop bands to La Scala Ballet's Giselle.
The White Raven had lots of things going for it, especially the sensational strangeness
of the staging by Glass' longtime design collaborator, Robert Wilson. His veritable
Jungian dreamscape of geometric shapes and quicksilver lighting featured two raven-
headed figures with green hands, Siamese twins, a dragon and an elephant's foot,
Dorothy and the Tin Man and Miss Universe (mezzo-soprano Janice Felty soaring down
from the flies on a crescent moon).
As a strictly instrumental composer, Glass is given to what sometimes feels like
mindless note spinning, if not outright self-plagiarism, which may be the curse of any
truly original voice with no other sources to draw upon when inspiration flags. Where
Schoenberg and Stravinsky sometimes took a change of pace with, say, transcriptions
of Bach or Brahms, Glass is always himself.
Still, his instantly recognizable minimalist style -- the enigmatic minor thirds, the
relentless rhythmic pulse, the endless ostinato -- is uncannily right for certain kinds of
opera, dance and film. In The White Raven, the harmonies seemed more complex than
in some of his recent works (i.e., the Third Symphony, with its frequent unison
passages).
Twenty-five years after the premiere of his landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach,
Glass is underrated as a composer for the voice. Last weekend, with Dennis Russell
Davies expertly conducting the American Composers Orchestra, the score created a
richly layered texture in which to set a superb cast's singing. A highlight was the dazzling
quartet by Miss Universe and three Scientists (Ana Paula Russo, Maria Jonas, Douglas
Perry) that brought down the curtain at intermission.
However, one thing the three-hour opera did not have was a story. Commissioned by
Portugal's government to commemorate the years 1490 to 1500, a pivotal period of
world exploration (Vasco da Gama is a character in the opera), it has a libretto in
Portuguese by Luisa Costa Gomes. Also on hand was avant-garde choreographer
Lucinda Childs, who played the Writer, a sort of narrator who appeared from time to time
to deliver commentary in English.
But it would be folly to try to make sense of The White Raven's hodgepodge of verse,
scientific treatise, newspaper headlines, journal entries and, in the pageantlike finale, a
long list of Portuguese historical figures. Maybe this was a hit in Lisbon, where the opera
debuted in 1998, but the lame ending was a distinct letdown in New York.
For such old-fashioned notions as plot, character and narrative point of view,
festivalgoers had the other two works to contemplate, though neither could ever be
accused of being conventional. Edda in particular was a heady brew of myth, music and
stagecraft. There wasn't a horned helmet in sight, no small achievement for a work
inspired by Viking culture. There was a breastplate, but it was blue-tinged and adorned
with six breasts, worn by a goatish figure on towering heels with long, razor-sharp
fingernails, the Seeress.
Bagby conceived Edda and did much research in Iceland on its ancient yarns and
fables. They are elemental, often bloody tales about the creation of the world, the curse
of gold on human behavior and a war between gods and giants, some of which show up
in Wagner's Ring cycle. The stories felt contemporary, hitting the emotional hot buttons
enumerated in its subtitle -- lust, revenge, family -- with dead-on accuracy.
With a cast of six, several of whom played fiddle, lyre and flute, Edda was sung in
Icelandic. The modern realizations of this old music (no original scores exist) were both
simple and complex at the same time, a combination of folk concert and ritualistic
seance. Ping Chong's deft staging included an innovative solution to the perennial
problem of supertitles. English translations were projected onto two panels onstage
where the eye could follow them easily instead of having to snatch glances above the
proscenium arch, as is customary in most opera houses.
Luci Mie Traditrici was another work that looked backward, based on the notorious story
of Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, the prince of Venosa, who murdered his wife
and her lover in 1590. He also wrote some of the most arresting madrigals of his era.
In the opera, staged by choreographer Trisha Brown, the drama was depicted in starkly
abstract fashion. All four characters -- the Duke (Paul Armin Edelmann), Duchess
(Annette Stricker), Servant (John Bowen) and Guest (Lawrence Zazzo) -- were
costumed in white on an essentially blank space except for rows of "shark's teeth,"
serrated strips that rose and fell. Performed from behind a scrim on a stage rimmed by
blue light, the opera could be hard to follow -- it took me a while to tell the difference
between the Servant and the doomed Guest. The singing was intense from beginning to
end, with no wasted motion in the 75-minute work.
Sciarrino's orchestra writing was the most interesting thing about the opera. It was
restrained, quiet music, characterized by an ever-shifting pattern of seemingly random
notes, fragmented phrases and repeating thematic cells.
"We listen more when we are on the edge of silence," the composer said in a
preperformance symposium.
Perhaps because of the music's intimacy, the 22 members of the Monnaie Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Kazushi Ono, were incorporated into the set, playing from a pit
at stage right. It was tempting to watch the players deal with the demands of Sciarrino's
score -- full of extended techniques and intricate little solos -- at the expense of following
the drama.
Naturally, Lincoln Center had a point to make in grouping The White Raven, Edda and
Luci Mie Traditrici together in the first week of the festival. Nigel Redden, the festival
director, said at a luncheon for the Music Critics Association of North America that the
programming was an effort to "expand the definition of what opera ought to be in the
21st century."
Each opera looked to stories from the past for themes that remain relevant today. All
three were characterized by highly stylized movement and gesture, with Edda using
techniques of American Sign Language as a motif, a far cry from opera's "stand and
deliver" tradition.
One difference between The White Raven and the other two operas was telling. Both
Edda and Luci Mie Traditrici are deeply emotional, each about the suffering that comes
from love, from greed, from death. Glass' opera, on the other hand, was more of an
intellectual construction, with its theme of exploration and discovery. For all its
shimmering beauty, his music had a facile, assembly-line quality.
Opera has always been the most passionate art form, and the great opera of ideas has
yet to be written.
Le choix de nos mdiathcaires: Sciarrino Page 1 sur 1

Salvatore SCIARRINO (1947)

Luci mie traditrici

Annette Stricker - Otto Katzameier - Kai Wessel - Simon Jaunin

Klangforum Wien
Beat Furrer
Cote Sciarrino a souvent recours des titres formuls comme des expressions potiques. Luci mie
Mdiathque traditrici ( mes yeux trompeurs) est un court opra en deux actes cr lors du Festival de
Schwetzingen en 1998. Le livret s'inspire d'un drame baroque de Giaconto Andrea Cicognini, Il
FS3298 tradimento per l'onore (1664), une sorte de tmoignage sur la tragdie du prince de Venosa, le
compositeur Carlo Gesualdo. Ce drame a t rduit sa substantielle moelle : un serviteur, le
Pour connatre la prince, sa femme et son amant, quelques scnes au dialogue rare. Toute rfrence Gesualdo a
disponibilit de ce
mdia, cliquez sur la disparu. Mme plus, au dbut de la partition, on entend une lgie de Claude Lejeune sur un
cote. texte de Ronsard. Cette musique de Claude Lejeune reviendra hanter les interludes de l'opra.
Une fois de plus, on reconnat le style musical trs marqu de Sciarrino avec ces sons au bord
du silence, ces effleurements, ces jeux sur l'inspiration et l'expiration du souffle des musiciens
vent. Aprs avoir vu et entendu cette oeuvre en reprsentation La Monnaie, aprs avoir
vcu cette position de "guetteur de son", je mets en garde contre le rflexe qui pousse
augmenter le volume sonore, surexposer la partition, alors que cette musique doit apparatre
comme un son lointain, perdu dans la profondeur de la nuit, comme une trace de bruit entendu
derrire une fentre ferme. Ce n'est qu' cette condition que Luci mie traditrici prend toute sa
force potique.

BvL

Copyright 2001 La Mdiathque -

file://F:\Mes%20documents\My%20Music\CD-909\Sciarrino\Le%20choix%20de%20nos%20mdiat... 2003-09-06