The blue note
Chopin through the words of George Sand
Pamela Villoresi & Paolo Restani
Drama by Daniela Morelli
A pianist and an actress play the parts of a musician and a writer: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin and Aurore Lucile Dupin, also known as George Sand.
On stage Paolo Restani and Pamela Villoresi, who is also directing.
The blue note is a play where Chopin’s music interacts and clashes with a ruthless, yet at times tender, analysis made by an unconventional woman. She loved him, looked after him, took care of him, supported him, took him on strenuous journeys, on absurd excursions on donkey back, in the mundane vortex of Parisian salons, she pampered him in her summer residence in Nohant, she surrounded him with distinguished guests: painters, writers, musicians… and, in the end, she had to leave him.
What does his music tell us about him?
What kind of man does George Sand tell us about?
Their breakup leaves Chopin “…Completely disoriented… dumbfounded, giddy, dazed”. She is furious but still able to write about it with composure and clarity of mind: “Nurse, because that was my mission”.
The blue note (the perfect note that makes music harmonize with painting and that recurs in the conversations during the summer stays in Nohant) has its starting point in this ending and shows us a man in need of a strong woman, who is more economically stable.
Tormented by illness, obsessed with music, self-righteous, fickle and egocentric, shrewd and sarcastic, irresistible entertainer: that’s Chopin.
George Sand, a pseudonym she used for her transgressive novels, was gifted with an extraordinary vitality and curiosity. Divorced, sexually free, forerunner of socialism, explorer, walker and gardener, she was a tireless mistress of the house and, at night, a prolific writer of novels that allowed her to maintain a high standard of living and to look after a musician with demanding needs. A flawed mother, she preferred her son Maurice to her daughter Solange, who, on the other hand, was Chopin’s favourite.
In the end he is the genius and she is the woman who made the creation of his best works possible, a resilient woman, who proved capable of releasing herself from an unbalanced love, recounting it to posterity with the gratitude and strength (or arrogance) that belong to those who can forgive.
Daniela Morelli
His music is intrinsically Polish, but he wouldn’t have become the composer we all know without a French soul; for this reason I like to think of him as a crossbreed. Chopin owes France something that is indecipherable and ineffable.
And what about the things he owes George Sand?
Along with the actress/director who on stage tells about Chopin and with the playwright who arranges and translates our personal anecdotes, we imagine Chopin’s relationship with the female universe, the obsession as well as the fascination and joy deriving therefrom, “Those who never laugh are not serious people”: that was his motto.
“The blue note” is a play that was moulded to let us find our way out through this maze of sensations, feelings, psyches, turmoils and melancholies. A mise-en-scène that grasps the dimensions and the daily routines that define the relationship between the musician and the writer, and that disclose more of a connection based on collaboration, reconciliation, veneration and dependence than a sentimental relationship. A thrilling experience and a devastating one at the same time.
They are a mirror image of each other and, simultaneously, they are diametrically opposed: that’s chilling.
What did Chopin and Sand gave each other?
A 9-year relationship leaves a permanent mark in the short life of a such a fragile man as Chopin was (1810-1849). As a pianist, a researcher, an archaeologist of his music, I feel entitled to say that these 9 years produced the most amazing things that Chopin could have ever achieved in his era, things that will remain in history forever.
Does this have anything to do with the cultural mileu that Sand surrounded him with? Delacroix, Hugo, Balzac… Or with the countryside of Bérry, so reminscent of his Poland, with the “castle of Nohant”? With her commitment? With the ambivalence of their relationship?
A mysterious relationship portrayed by Pamela and me on stage: she as George Sand and I as Frédéric Chopin.
Does this mean I am a crossbreed as well? Musician and actor?
No, just a pianist.
Paolo Restani
Pamela Villoresi narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Drama by Daniela Morelli
Images by Massimo Catalani
Frédéric Chopin
Fantasia in F minor op. 49
Nocturne in E minor op. 72 no. 1
Étude in E major op. 10 no. 3 “Tristesse”
Nocturne in E flat major op. 9 no. 2
Nocturne in C sharp minor op. posth.
Étude in C minor op. 10 no. 12 “Revolutionary”
Nocturne in B major op. 9 no. 3
Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor op. 66
Polonaise in A flat major op. 53 “Heroic”
Polonaise in F sharp minor op. 44 “Tragic”
Biography of Pamela Villoresi
Biography of Daniela Morelli
Biography of Massimo Catalani
Rücken’s Realm
The life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
It’s through a child’s eyes that we hesitantly take our first steps into the fantastic world of the greatest musical genius of all time…
A journey where music chases human emotions… heightens them… while depriving them of their human nature…
A journey where the everyday emotions, expectations, joys, disillusions, fears, humiliations, afflictions and sufferings of the man who drew close to God more than anybody else, are determined by musical tempos.
Rücken’s Realm is the fantastic world, later mentioned in his letters, imagined by Mozart as a young boy.
Aspects of his life: the story
Chiara Muti “gives voice” to moments of Mozart’s life, interpreting issues such as the man versus the genius, Mozart’s idea of absolute versus the restrictions of his time: anecdotes, documents, letters to his father Leopold, to his mother, to his cousin are at the core of the interpretation.
Paolo Restani plays Mozart’s masterpieces and Liszt’s transcriptions; in some cases the music “intertwines” with the narration combining piano notes with the “emotional notes” inhabiting the inner dimension of the composer from Salzburg.
The schedule of the piano repertoire ranges from the very first, but nevertheless interesting and valuable, pieces composed by Wolfgang as a young boy (Minuetto in G major K. 1, Allegro in C major K. 9a, Klavierstück in F major K. 33b) to his final works: Confutatis and Lacrimosa from Requiem K. 626 and Ave Verum Corpus K. 618 in Franz Liszt’s piano transcriptions, going through masterpieces such as Fantasia K. 475, Rondo in D major K. 485, Gigue in G major K. 574.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Rondo K. 485
Minuetto K. 1
Allegro K. 9a
Presto – from Sonata K. 310
Klavierstück K. 33b
Alla Turca – from Sonata K. 331
Fantasia K. 475
Adagio – from Sonata K. 457
Fantasia K. 397
Giga K. 574
Adagio – from Sonata K. 280
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Franz Liszt
Confutatis and Lacrimosa from Requiem K. 626
Ave Verum Corpus K. 618
Biography of Chiara Muti
Ludwig’s Dream
Ludwig II and Richard Wagner: the last days
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
It’s a story about a passion… a consuming fire… the obsession that is the inextricable link between Ludwig ll of Bavaria and Richard Wagner. Wrapped up in the visionary clouds of the music world of the great composer, Ludwig loses contact with himself… devoured by insanity… This is where the legend begins.
Chiara Muti gives voice to the ever-changing facets of a passion that is devouring to the point of self-annihilation. The acting part includes extracts from Klaus Mann’s novel Vergittertes Fenster which depicts Ludwig’s last 48 hours at Berg Castle, until he committed suicide in mysterious circumstances in Lake Starnberg – as well as poems written by Ludwig himself and pages taken from the letters he exchanged with his cousin Sissi, Empress of Austria.
Paolo Restani interprets Ludwig’s Wagnerian dream in the transcriptions and in the original works for piano by Franz Liszt.
Richard Wagner – Ludwig II of Bavaria
The abundant correpondence between King Ludwig II and composer Richard Wagner – described by Ludwig himself as “a special, sublime and divine friend” – has survived to this day, reflecting the ups and downs of the period between 1864 (Ludwig’s ascent to the throne) and 1883 (Wagner’s death), as well as being a testament to their long-lasting platonic relationship.
Wagner’s first letter to Ludwig is dated May 3rd 1864 and Ludwig’s immediate response is dated May 5th. The last letter sent to Wagner by the Bavarian sovereign, who was concerned about his friend’s declining health, is dated November 26th 1882 and he wrote it during his stay at the Hohenschwangau Castle. The very long reponse is dated January 10th 1883. In this last letter, Wagner, who was very sick at that point, reaffirmed his complete devotion and gratitude to his “venerable benefactor”, as if he sensed that his life was coming to an end.
Indeed, a month later, on February 13th, Wagner passed away in Palazzo Vendramin in Venice, on a small couch, which was “of a golden colour and covered with red damask”, and that can be still admired today in Wahnfried, Wagner’s villa in Bayreuth, the place where he lived and also where he was laid to rest in the quiet garden.
Ludwig, consumed by grief, covered the big light-coloured wood piano, where Wagner used to play for him during his stay at the Hohenschwangau Castel, with a black veil. That was the end of the Bavarian sovereign’s music dream.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Franz Liszt
Transcendental Étude no. 11 Harmonies du Soir
R.W.-Venezia
Transcendental Étude no. 3 Paysage
Richard Wagner-Franz Liszt
Isoldens Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde)
Feierlicher Marsch (Parsifal)
Elsas Brautzug zum Münster (Lohengrin)
Biography of Chiara Muti
Nevsky Prospect
Gogol and Rachmaninov’s Preludes
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
Paolo Restani and Chiara Muti interact between notes and words creating a “story” that conveys the sensitivity, the emotional states and the psychology of the characters in Nevsky Prospect… a suggestive modality that brings to the stage the artistic identity of 1900’s Russia.
Nevsky Prospect: glimpses of Russia at the end of the Nineteenth century, between Gogol and Rachmaninov
Nevsky Prospect is probably the most famous short story written by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. It was written between 1831 and 1834, and it was first published in 1835.
Like the other works of fiction by Gogol, this story “encountered” many difficulties in obtaining censors’ approval because it asserted itself as a suggestive and searing snapshot of the decline of Russian society under the Tsarist regime in the Nineteenth century, just a few decades before the big catastrophes that shook the world (first the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, then the Black Sea revolt and the Odessa uprising, and finally World War I and the October Revolution), marking the definitive and irreversible end of the largest continental empire on the planet.
The story begins with a long description of Nevsky Prospect, the main and most important street in St. Petersburg, the warm heart of the city: a real runaway crowded with shops and people from all backgrounds. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon are the only times of day when the street empties, as people are busy at work. In the evening the street is tinged with a sensual light which transforms everything. The story begins exactly at this time of day. It involves two young protagonists, embroiled in sordid and hopeless passions, completely outside of the boundaries of normality. One of them kills himself because of the unrequited and misunderstood love for a young prostitute, the other one harasses the wife of a German artisan, who is constantly drunk, and even tries to rape her but he ends up being beaten by the woman’s husband and his friends.
A grotesque and absurd snapshot of a nightlife – or so-called movida – of the worst kind in a European capital city where the upper and middle classes’ disregard of decorum and restraints is representative of a collective failure, which will come to a predictable and highly dramatic end during the historical events that will affect the Empire in the following 70/80 years.
The backdrop to this literary context is provided by Rachmaninov’s Preludes, amazing pieces where forms of late-romanticism and post-romanticism, at which the composer excelled (Concertos for piano and orchestra and, to en even greater extent, the Symphonies), “contract” and dissolve into a cutting decandentism, in terms of music and expression. Musical aphorisms, to all effects: their raw and powerful expresiveness persists even when the lyricism prevails and when the singing depicts – in a neat and effective way – the irreversibile disintegration of a world and an era that will permanently wear away on European and Asian battlefields over the following decades, until 1945.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Sergej Rachmaninov
Prelude op. 32 no. 1 in C major (allegro vivace)
Prelude op. 23 no. 4 in D major (andante cantabile)
Prelude op. 32 no. 2 in B flat minor (allegretto)
Prelude op. 32 no. 6 in F minor (allegro appassionato)
Prelude op. 32 no. 5 in G major (moderato)
Prelude op. 32 no. 12 in G sharp minor (allegro)
Prelude op. 32 no. 10 in B minor (lento)
Prelude op. 3 no. 2 in C sharp minor (lento)
Biography of Chiara Muti
Real life stories… for piano and narrator
Simona Marchini & Paolo Restani
The opera is deeply rooted in my childhood: heroes, heroines, dramas, passions… All these things have nourished my life and my family’s life, for as long as I can remember. The emotional impact of my tendency to identify with the characters was so strong that it often moved me to tears.
I went through the whole repertoire of feelings: from the martyrdom of love to the playful mischievousness of romantic plots…
I was basically living in a fantasy world made of sounds, costumes, lights and “miraculous” voices.
Well, all these elements steeped, soaked into my multi-layered individual heritage, permeated my experiences and became a “performance”.
I think I’ve created a truly unique form of theatre dedicated to opera: “Salotto Carmen” (1986 Piccolo Regio-Fenice) and “Dossier Trovatore” (Verdi Festival 1990, Parma) and the monologues in “Quelli della notte” possess all the naivety, tenderness and proneness to identify with the characters typical of a simple soul… Light irony but also real emotion for a “genre” that is so rich in history and cultural identity.
Hence the idea of telling three fascinating stories by Giuseppe Verdi (Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore), the so-called popular trilogy… I did it my way, bringing in the amazingly refined art of Paolo Restani, who describes with the piano Verdi’s themes through paraphrases by Franz Liszt (Aida, Trovatore, Rigoletto).
It’s undoubtedly a bold match but the real purpose is to deliver a scholarly, delicate and passionate entertainment on a “topic” that resonates deep inside each of us. As long as our eyes are “smiling” and sensitive enough to look at the melodrama with the love it deserves.
Simona Marchini
Simona Marchini narrator
Paolo Restani pianist
Written by Simona Marchini and Claudio Pallottini
Directed by Marco Mattolini
Giuseppe Verdi-Franz Liszt
Aida: Danza sacra e duetto finale S. 436
Miserere du Trovatore S. 433
Rigoletto: Paraphrase de Concert S. 434
Biography of Simona Marchini
The blue note
Chopin through the words of George Sand
Pamela Villoresi & Paolo Restani
Drama by Daniela Morelli
A pianist and an actress play the parts of a musician and a writer: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin and Aurore Lucile Dupin, also known as George Sand.
On stage Paolo Restani and Pamela Villoresi, who is also directing.
The blue note is a play where Chopin’s music interacts and clashes with a ruthless, yet at times tender, analysis made by an unconventional woman. She loved him, looked after him, took care of him, supported him, took him on strenuous journeys, on absurd excursions on donkey back, in the mundane vortex of Parisian salons, she pampered him in her summer residence in Nohant, she surrounded him with distinguished guests: painters, writers, musicians… and, in the end, she had to leave him.
What does his music tell us about him?
What kind of man does George Sand tell us about?
Their breakup leaves Chopin “…Completely disoriented… dumbfounded, giddy, dazed”. She is furious but still able to write about it with composure and clarity of mind: “Nurse, because that was my mission”.
The blue note (the perfect note that makes music harmonize with painting and that recurs in the conversations during the summer stays in Nohant) has its starting point in this ending and shows us a man in need of a strong woman, who is more economically stable.
Tormented by illness, obsessed with music, self-righteous, fickle and egocentric, shrewd and sarcastic, irresistible entertainer: that’s Chopin.
George Sand, a pseudonym she used for her transgressive novels, was gifted with an extraordinary vitality and curiosity. Divorced, sexually free, forerunner of socialism, explorer, walker and gardener, she was a tireless mistress of the house and, at night, a prolific writer of novels that allowed her to maintain a high standard of living and to look after a musician with demanding needs. A flawed mother, she preferred her son Maurice to her daughter Solange, who, on the other hand, was Chopin’s favourite.
In the end he is the genius and she is the woman who made the creation of his best works possible, a resilient woman, who proved capable of releasing herself from an unbalanced love, recounting it to posterity with the gratitude and strength (or arrogance) that belong to those who can forgive.
Daniela Morelli
His music is intrinsically Polish, but he wouldn’t have become the composer we all know without a French soul; for this reason I like to think of him as a crossbreed. Chopin owes France something that is indecipherable and ineffable.
And what about the things he owes George Sand?
Along with the actress/director who on stage tells about Chopin and with the playwright who arranges and translates our personal anecdotes, we imagine Chopin’s relationship with the female universe, the obsession as well as the fascination and joy deriving therefrom, “Those who never laugh are not serious people”: that was his motto.
“The blue note” is a play that was moulded to let us find our way out through this maze of sensations, feelings, psyches, turmoils and melancholies. A mise-en-scène that grasps the dimensions and the daily routines that define the relationship between the musician and the writer, and that disclose more of a connection based on collaboration, reconciliation, veneration and dependence than a sentimental relationship. A thrilling experience and a devastating one at the same time.
They are a mirror image of each other and, simultaneously, they are diametrically opposed: that’s chilling.
What did Chopin and Sand gave each other?
A 9-year relationship leaves a permanent mark in the short life of a such a fragile man as Chopin was (1810-1849). As a pianist, a researcher, an archaeologist of his music, I feel entitled to say that these 9 years produced the most amazing things that Chopin could have ever achieved in his era, things that will remain in history forever.
Does this have anything to do with the cultural mileu that Sand surrounded him with? Delacroix, Hugo, Balzac… Or with the countryside of Bérry, so reminscent of his Poland, with the “castle of Nohant”? With her commitment? With the ambivalence of their relationship?
A mysterious relationship portrayed by Pamela and me on stage: she as George Sand and I as Frédéric Chopin.
Does this mean I am a crossbreed as well? Musician and actor?
No, just a pianist.
Paolo Restani
Pamela Villoresi narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Drama by Daniela Morelli
Images by Massimo Catalani
Frédéric Chopin
Fantasia in F minor op. 49
Nocturne in E minor op. 72 no. 1
Étude in E major op. 10 no. 3 “Tristesse”
Nocturne in E flat major op. 9 no. 2
Nocturne in C sharp minor op. posth.
Étude in C minor op. 10 no. 12 “Revolutionary”
Nocturne in B major op. 9 no. 3
Fantaisie-Improptu in C sharp minor op. 66
Polonaise in A flat major op. 53 “Heroic”
Polonaise in F sharp minor op. 44 “Tragic”
Biography of Pamela Villoresi
Biography of Daniela Morelli
Biography of Massimo Catalani
Rücken’s Realm
The life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
It’s through a child’s eyes that we hesitantly take our first steps into the fantastic world of the greatest musical genius of all time…
A journey where music chases human emotions… heightens them… while depriving them of their human nature…
A journey where the everyday emotions, expectations, joys, disillusions, fears, humiliations, afflictions and sufferings of the man who drew close to God more than anybody else, are determined by musical tempos.
Rücken’s Realm is the fantastic world, later mentioned in his letters, imagined by Mozart as a young boy.
Aspects of his life: the story
Chiara Muti “gives voice” to moments of Mozart’s life, interpreting issues such as the man versus the genius, Mozart’s idea of absolute versus the restrictions of his time: anecdotes, documents, letters to his father Leopold, to his mother, to his cousin are at the core of the interpretation.
Paolo Restani plays Mozart’s masterpieces and Liszt’s transcriptions; in some cases the music “intertwines” with the narration combining piano notes with the “emotional notes” inhabiting the inner dimension of the composer from Salzburg.
The schedule of the piano repertoire ranges from the very first, but nevertheless interesting and valuable, pieces composed by Wolfgang as a young boy (Minuetto in G major K. 1, Allegro in C major K. 9a, Klavierstück in F major K. 33b) to his final works: Confutatis and Lacrimosa from Requiem K. 626 and Ave Verum Corpus K. 618 in Franz Liszt’s piano transcriptions, going through masterpieces such as Fantasia K. 475, Rondo in D major K. 485, Gigue in G major K. 574.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Rondo K. 485
Minuetto K. 1
Allegro K. 9a
Presto – from Sonata K. 310
Klavierstück K. 33b
Alla Turca – from Sonata K. 331
Fantasia K. 475
Adagio – from Sonata K. 457
Fantasia K. 397
Giga K. 574
Adagio – from Sonata K. 280
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Franz Liszt
Confutatis and Lacrimosa from Requiem K. 626
Ave Verum Corpus K. 618
Biography of Chiara Muti
Ludwig’s Dream
Ludwig II and Richard Wagner: the last days
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
It’s a story about a passion… a consuming fire… the obsession that is the inextricable link between Ludwig ll of Bavaria and Richard Wagner. Wrapped up in the visionary clouds of the music world of the great composer, Ludwig loses contact with himself… devoured by insanity… This is where the legend begins.
Chiara Muti gives voice to the ever-changing facets of a passion that is devouring to the point of self-annihilation. The acting part includes extracts from Klaus Mann’s novel Vergittertes Fenster which depicts Ludwig’s last 48 hours at Berg Castle, until he committed suicide in mysterious circumstances in Lake Starnberg – as well as poems written by Ludwig himself and pages taken from the letters he exchanged with his cousin Sissi, Empress of Austria.
Paolo Restani interprets Ludwig’s Wagnerian dream in the transcriptions and in the original works for piano by Franz Liszt.
Richard Wagner – Ludwig II of Bavaria
The abundant correpondence between King Ludwig II and composer Richard Wagner – described by Ludwig himself as “a special, sublime and divine friend” – has survived to this day, reflecting the ups and downs of the period between 1864 (Ludwig’s ascent to the throne) and 1883 (Wagner’s death), as well as being a testament to their long-lasting platonic relationship.
Wagner’s first letter to Ludwig is dated May 3rd 1864 and Ludwig’s immediate response is dated May 5th. The last letter sent to Wagner by the Bavarian sovereign, who was concerned about his friend’s declining health, is dated November 26th 1882 and he wrote it during his stay at the Hohenschwangau Castle. The very long reponse is dated January 10th 1883. In this last letter, Wagner, who was very sick at that point, reaffirmed his complete devotion and gratitude to his “venerable benefactor”, as if he sensed that his life was coming to an end.
Indeed, a month later, on February 13th, Wagner passed away in Palazzo Vendramin in Venice, on a small couch, which was “of a golden colour and covered with red damask”, and that can be still admired today in Wahnfried, Wagner’s villa in Bayreuth, the place where he lived and also where he was laid to rest in the quiet garden.
Ludwig, consumed by grief, covered the big light-coloured wood piano, where Wagner used to play for him during his stay at the Hohenschwangau Castel, with a black veil. That was the end of the Bavarian sovereign’s music dream.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Franz Liszt
Transcendental Étude no. 11 Harmonies du Soir
R.W.-Venezia
Transcendental Étude no. 3 Paysage
Richard Wagner-Franz Liszt
Isoldens Liebestod (Tristan und Isolde)
Feierlicher Marsch (Parsifal)
Elsas Brautzug zum Münster (Lohengrin)
Biography of Chiara Muti
Nevsky Prospect
Gogol and Rachmaninov’s Preludes
Chiara Muti & Paolo Restani
Paolo Restani and Chiara Muti interact between notes and words creating a “story” that conveys the sensitivity, the emotional states and the psychology of the characters in Nevsky Prospect… a suggestive modality that brings to the stage the artistic identity of 1900’s Russia.
Nevsky Prospect: glimpses of Russia at the end of the Nineteenth century, between Gogol and Rachmaninov
Nevsky Prospect is probably the most famous short story written by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. It was written between 1831 and 1834, and it was first published in 1835.
Like the other works of fiction by Gogol, this story “encountered” many difficulties in obtaining censors’ approval because it asserted itself as a suggestive and searing snapshot of the decline of Russian society under the Tsarist regime in the Nineteenth century, just a few decades before the big catastrophes that shook the world (first the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, then the Black Sea revolt and the Odessa uprising, and finally World War I and the October Revolution), marking the definitive and irreversible end of the largest continental empire on the planet.
The story begins with a long description of Nevsky Prospect, the main and most important street in St. Petersburg, the warm heart of the city: a real runaway crowded with shops and people from all backgrounds. Mid-morning and mid-afternoon are the only times of day when the street empties, as people are busy at work. In the evening the street is tinged with a sensual light which transforms everything. The story begins exactly at this time of day. It involves two young protagonists, embroiled in sordid and hopeless passions, completely outside of the boundaries of normality. One of them kills himself because of the unrequited and misunderstood love for a young prostitute, the other one harasses the wife of a German artisan, who is constantly drunk, and even tries to rape her but he ends up being beaten by the woman’s husband and his friends.
A grotesque and absurd snapshot of a nightlife – or so-called movida – of the worst kind in a European capital city where the upper and middle classes’ disregard of decorum and restraints is representative of a collective failure, which will come to a predictable and highly dramatic end during the historical events that will affect the Empire in the following 70/80 years.
The backdrop to this literary context is provided by Rachmaninov’s Preludes, amazing pieces where forms of late-romanticism and post-romanticism, at which the composer excelled (Concertos for piano and orchestra and, to en even greater extent, the Symphonies), “contract” and dissolve into a cutting decandentism, in terms of music and expression. Musical aphorisms, to all effects: their raw and powerful expresiveness persists even when the lyricism prevails and when the singing depicts – in a neat and effective way – the irreversibile disintegration of a world and an era that will permanently wear away on European and Asian battlefields over the following decades, until 1945.
Chiara Muti narrator and director
Paolo Restani pianist
Sergej Rachmaninov
Prelude op. 32 no. 1 in C major (allegro vivace)
Prelude op. 23 no. 4 in D major (andante cantabile)
Prelude op. 32 no. 2 in B flat minor (allegretto)
Prelude op. 32 no. 6 in F minor (allegro appassionato)
Prelude op. 32 no. 5 in G major (moderato)
Prelude op. 32 no. 12 in G sharp minor (allegro)
Prelude op. 32 no. 10 in B minor (lento)
Prelude op. 3 no. 2 in C sharp minor (lento)
Biography of Chiara Muti
Real life stories… for piano and narrator
Simona Marchini & Paolo Restani
The opera is deeply rooted in my childhood: heroes, heroines, dramas, passions… All these things have nourished my life and my family’s life, for as long as I can remember. The emotional impact of my tendency to identify with the characters was so strong that it often moved me to tears.
I went through the whole repertoire of feelings: from the martyrdom of love to the playful mischievousness of romantic plots…
I was basically living in a fantasy world made of sounds, costumes, lights and “miraculous” voices.
Well, all these elements steeped, soaked into my multi-layered individual heritage, permeated my experiences and became a “performance”.
I think I’ve created a truly unique form of theatre dedicated to opera: “Salotto Carmen” (1986 Piccolo Regio-Fenice) and “Dossier Trovatore” (Verdi Festival 1990, Parma) and the monologues in “Quelli della notte” possess all the naivety, tenderness and proneness to identify with the characters typical of a simple soul… Light irony but also real emotion for a “genre” that is so rich in history and cultural identity.
Hence the idea of telling three fascinating stories by Giuseppe Verdi (Traviata, Rigoletto, Trovatore), the so-called popular trilogy… I did it my way, bringing in the amazingly refined art of Paolo Restani, who describes with the piano Verdi’s themes through paraphrases by Franz Liszt (Aida, Trovatore, Rigoletto).
It’s undoubtedly a bold match but the real purpose is to deliver a scholarly, delicate and passionate entertainment on a “topic” that resonates deep inside each of us. As long as our eyes are “smiling” and sensitive enough to look at the melodrama with the love it deserves.
Simona Marchini
Simona Marchini narrator
Paolo Restani pianist
Written by Simona Marchini and Claudio Pallottini
Directed by Marco Mattolini
Giuseppe Verdi-Franz Liszt
Aida: Danza sacra e duetto finale S. 436
Miserere du Trovatore S. 433
Rigoletto: Paraphrase de Concert S. 434
Biography of Simona Marchini