The starting points of both Salvatore Sciarrino’s new operas are strongly contrasted: they are Der Prozess (The Trial) by Franz Kafka and the Holy Scriptures (The Song of Songs). Although both works are completely different in their choice of subject and dramatic composition, both place suffering, which is both current and eternal in equal measure, at the centre of their account.
La porta della legge (Before the Law) goes back to a story by Franz Kafka which was written as an independent work. It was later incorporated into his novel Der Prozess (The Trial) and is used here in cyclical form. “Almost a circular monologue” states the subtitle, and this circular form also constitutes an essential element of the opera. We experience a man’s waiting in vain in front of the gate of the law, a waiting which lasts until his death. The scene is repeated three times: at the beginning, the man is sung by a baritone, in the second scene by a counter-tenor and in the third scene, baritone and counter-tenor sing together until their life is cut short.
Through this dramatic device, the repetition of the story acquires the terrible perspective of a universal experience which immediately begins anew for another person; and it is precisely this repetition which gives the story its inevitability and lends it metaphysical elements.
The three scenes are indeed very similar, but by no means identical: they differ through tonal transformations and scarcely audible sliding movements, through tiny variations and changes. The second scene seems to take place in another setting from the first, in a light, bright place; the room begins to shimmer as in a dream of light. After that, darkness returns in the third scene. This is, however, not a true reprise; rather, a new sound world develops with ironic and despairing characteristics. The musical progression flows continually, is not divided into separate numbers and has an inner periodicity which almost recalls a passacaglia.
The opera Super flumina is quite differently structured. In addition to the Bible, its references range from Friedrich Novalis to a novel by Elizabeth Smart, from which the libretto was created. The first version of the text dates from 1983: even then Sciarrino was preoccupied with the character of a homeless woman who was lost in a large railway station, and whose dramatic situation unsparingly depicts both a human and a universal catastrophe.
Stations are temples devoted to transport, monuments to the migrations of uniform crowds of people. They rise up powerfully above the individual who remains behind, crushed and overwhelmed. In the midst of noise and screeching, faceless people hurry by, people who have become a flood inattentive to the tragedy of a woman who is left with her loneliness, her madness. A social fact which everyone has encountered in reality becomes the crux of a dramatic and poetic portrayal. The opera comprises one act in four scenes, with two intermezzi and three songs in the middle. Within it are found stylised machine noises, loudspeaker announcements recorded in the last few years at Italian stations and the chorus, the flood of humanity. All this takes place in Scarrino’s typical soundworld, a summation of signals from our daily surroundings. The protagonist is the woman, the homeless person, a messenger of truth. In her lament, Sciarrino has further developed the vocal style used in his recent works.
Despite identical orchestral scoring, these are aesthetically two very contrasting operas, both in their form and language: La porta delle legge is static and rigorous, rather severe in character, whilst Super flumina is lyrical and rich in varied tonal effects. However, both operas have something in common, and that is the belief in the power of tragedy, its theatrical portrayal of the last catastrophe which all people alike encounter on their journey. Sciarrino doesn’t only want to shock us with new experiences of perception. In each of us, a sense of brotherliness should emerge.
Paolo Cairoli
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
from: [t]akte 1/2009
Sciarrino premiere in Mannheim
Salvatore Sciarrino
La porta della legge
Opera in one act after a text by Franz Kafka (first performance)
25.4.2009 Wuppertal (Städtische Bühnen)
Director: Johannes Weigand,
Conductor: Hilary Griffiths
Super flumina (first performance)
20.5.2011 Mannheim (National Theatre)
Conductor: Tito Ceccherini,
Director: Andrea Schwalbach
Publisher: RAI Trade