LUS (LUCE)
Ermanna Montanari – voice
Luigi Ceccarelli – live electronics
Daniele Roccato – contrabass
direction Marco Martinelli
scenic space and costumes Margherita Manzelli, Ermanna Montanari
dress design of Bêlda Margherita Manzelli
background animation with original works by Margherita Manzelli edited by Margherita Manzelli, Alessandro and Francesco Tedde
sound direction Marco Olivieri
light designer Francesco Catacchio
technical director Fagio
video editing Alessandro and Francesco Tedde – Antropotopia
scene elements made by the technical team of Teatro delle Albe: Alessandro Bonoli, Fabio Ceroni, Enrico Isola, Dennis Masotti,Francesca Pambianco
tailoring Laura Graziani Alta Moda
organization and promotion Silvia Cassanelli, Silvia Pagliano
production Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione
in collaboration with Teatro delle Albe/Ravenna Teatro
Ermanna Montanari and Luigi Ceccarelli have created unforgettable pages of theater-in-music, from L’Isola di Alcina to La mano, performances by the Teatro delle Albe that have marked the history of Italian theater in the last two decades. Now they try their hand at LUS (LIGHT), a poem by Nevio Spadoni in the Romagna language, centered on Bêlda, a seer and healer of the Romagna countryside of the early twentieth century.
A powerful figure of a woman who is the victim of the country’s hypocrisy, who in the proud cry of revolt against the cowardice of men allows herself a curse of death against a “pretaccio”, guilty of having dug up her mother.
performances of Lus
January 16 – 24, 2015, Modena, Teatro delle Passioni
February 26, 2016, Verona, Teatro Camploy, L’altro Teatro
March 01, 2016, Cesena, Teatro A. Bonci
September 7, 2016, Roma, Il Giardino Ritrovato, Palazzo Venezia
September 8, 2016, Roma, Short Theatre Festival – Macro la Poland
September 27, 2016, Rimini, Sagra Musicale Malatestiana, Teatro degli Atti
October 18, 19, 2016, Shanghai (China), R.A.W! – China Shanghai International Arts Festival
November 24 – 27, 2016, Prato, Teatro Metastasio
December 1 – 4, 2016, Ravenna, Teatro Alighieri
April 21, 2018, Bologna, Arena del Sole
May 15, 2018, Lugano (Swiss), LAC Lugano Arte Cultura
Luṣ is both a concert and a theater show. These two elements coexist in the performance in an inseparable way, one represented by the two musicians, the other by the reciting voice. Sound is therefore the key element that unites the formal construction in a single entity: the reciting voice is integrated into the musical element, the music is part of the dramaturgical structure.
We use the term “sound” to understand both the music and the word “said” as a whole, thus considering them elements of a common language, in the same way we perceive them through a single sensory channel.
In Lus the sounds are those of the double bass, an instrument with a very rich and iridescent timbre, and those of the Romagna language by Ermanna Montanari who interprets the text by Nevio Spadoni written in a dialect with biting harshness and very powerful expressiveness – mother tongue of Ermanna and for this reason deeply felt, in the same way that an instrumentalist is in complete symbiosis with his own instrument.
Voice and double bass, instruments capable of producing an infinite range of sounds that cover the entire spectrum of the audible, generators of emotions of which they are millenary and atavistic testimony, and still instruments of expression of contemporary thought.
In Lus, the sounds produced live become a
complex sound universe through that alchemical operation of contemporaneity which is electronic processing. Not a process of transformation towards alienating and abstract sounds, but a process that makes the most subtle acoustic variations perceptible and that multiplies the overlapping timbres while keeping the original sound source unaltered. A process that considers technology as an expressive but at the same time transparent and non-destructive means of natural sound.
In Lus, digital processing is performed completely in real time. Starting from the amplification of sounds to make otherwise inaudible details perceptible, the sounds are broken down, recomposed and multiplied to create temporal overlaps and generate dense timbral stratifications, sometimes more complex than those of an entire orchestra. The sound is then spatialized and spread throughout the room with a surround system to ensure that the audience is totally immersed “in” the sound.
A sensory experience, at times delicately subtle, at times of telluric density, never aimed at itself, but completely dedicated to making Belda’s emotion, her misery, her compassion, her desperation, her holiness more real. And without possibly passing through the conventions and mediations of traditional languages, where the message of sound is in the essence of the sound itself, in its authenticity, just as authentic is the blood on Belda’s dress.
Luigi Ceccarelli and Daniele Rooccato
