The protagonist, Fitzcarraldo, played by the baritone Giorgio Celenza, crosses the Tiber together with his art company, composed of the Actress, played by the soprano Clara La Licata, the Actor, brought on stage by the tenor Antonio Sapio and the Assistant Director, the bass Yuri Guerra. With them, the ensemble Musica Necessaria composed by the Maestro Francesco Leineri himself, by Fabio Cuozzo on percussion and Luigi Ginesti on French horn, to which is added La Cantoria of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, a twelve-member choir. The Oracle’s voice-over, played by countertenor Antonello Dorigo, hovers over the characters.
The purpose of the journey, as in Herzog’s film, is Fitzcarraldo’s undertaking to build a new world that finds its element of salvation in art. The Opera narrates, in fact, the rehearsals for an opera show that, once the crossing is over, can only be performed in life.
The opera “Fitzcarraldo” is presented to the public on board a boat, an original moving stage among the unique views of the historic center of Rome, from Tiber Island to Castel Sant’Angelo. The protagonist Fitzcarraldo crosses the Tiber together with his art company composed of the first actress, the actor and the assistant director. Above them, in the distance, the off-screen voice of the Oracle, which prefigures a message that is gradually revealed to the listener. The instrumental ensemble, made up of synths and controllers for the electronic signal, of percussion instruments and French horn, accompany the verses that from the epic to the baroque form, from symbolism to contemporary language, restore that historical-cultural stratification typical of the city of Rome. The work is divided into five scenes introduced by the chorus that in Dantean meter supports the entire plot describing during the boat journey the ruins of the ancient city, the contemporary suburbs, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Maxxi and the bridge of a future civilization, as if it were a tourist guide who accompanies spectators on a visit to what remains of a post-modern world. The themes of the chorus are counterpointed by the characters of the work and Fitzcarraldo himself who little by little reveals his mission. The protagonist's enterprise is to build a new reality that finds its element of salvation in art, recounting in the scene the rehearsals of an operatic show that once the journey is over can only be performed in life.
In the score of «Fitzcarraldo Opera Lirica su battello» the structural codes of the lyric opera are markedly recalled, symbolically retaining its peculiarities and renewing them in a deliberately essential and contaminated writing. The instrumental ensemble that was chosen is reduced but clear in its atypicality, as in an ideal orchestra pit of a contemporary post-apocalyptic: synth and controller for the electronic signal, the rhythmic ancestry of the percussion instruments, the monodic lyricism of the French horn. The utopian search for the new world of Fitzcarraldo is also returned in the score in a mobile, chameleon-like approach to vocality: a parabola that goes from the spoken word, passing through psalmody and mannered virtuosity, towards an essentiality as if deserted, empty but extremely pure at the same time. The composer, Francesco Leineri, worked on a constant flow of music, a macro-form with intentionally blurred and hazy boundaries, proceeding with an unspecified division of the scenes, without rigorously juxtaposing the episodes, opting for a long and slow crossfade between them, as in a long dream.
The libretto is structured in line with the metric forms of the classical operatic tradition. It is divided into five scenes introduced by the chorus that in Dantean meter supports the entire opera describing during the boat journey the ruins of ancient Rome, the contemporary suburbs, Castel Sant'Angelo, the bridge of a future civilization, as if it were a tourist guide visiting what remains of a fallen, apocalyptic world, the world of a new prehistory, a metaphor for the journey to the underworld of the eternal city. The themes of the chorus are counterpointed by the characters of the opera and Fitzcarraldo himself who little by little reveals the destination of the journey. The descent into Hell becomes a climb of the mountain towards Paradise and so, as in Herzog's film, the protagonist's undertaking is the construction of a new reality that finds its element of salvation in art.
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