ARIADNE – MAURIZIO AZZAN (2021)
MONODRAMA-INSTALLATION FOR VOICE, FIVE PERFORMERS, SOUND OBJECTS AND ELECTRONICS
Ariadne is a multidisciplinary composition of music, literature, video and staging for one singer and 5 instrumentalists of the Schallfeld Ensemble.
Maurizio Azzan’s composition focus on the inner space between the people and the elements involved in the performance at its various levels of complexity, from the central role of the voice to the surrounding instruments framing it, to objects, which are transformed by transducers or loudspeakers into sounding surfaces and the noise of the audience. As additional sound sources, live electronics are diffused by a quadraphonic system and transducers are placed inside the piano and in each one of the other instruments producing a copy which is heard far from the musicians. The electronics interweave three levels of complexity: the noise of the audience, which seems to hover poised between an invisible character looking at Ariadne and the sea; the transformation of instruments that will become fragments of Ariadne’s voice(s); and the splitting of the singer’s voice, which becomes more and more multi-faceted as the work progresses.
Piece commisionned by Schallfeld Ensemble, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.
Libretto by Daniele Bellomi (full text here)
Music by Maurizio Azzan
Anna Piroli, soprano
May 19, 2021. Theater am Lend, Graz (World Premiere)
June 17, 2021. Festival Manifeste, T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Paris