Polvere di luna (2003)
for narrator and electronics
Texts by Sonia Bergamasco
Duration: 6’30”

First performance: Rome, 19/12/2003, Goethe Institut
Sonia Bergamasco, voice

Reviews

“Il Giornale della Musica” – April 2006
by Carla Di Lena
Actress Sonia Bergamasco makes her debut with a CD-book on Mauro Cardi’s music. The electroacoustic path of the little fish-moon A nursery rhyme in Italian and English traces the child’s prenatal life.
It is known that the most varied reasons lead artists to the world of childhood, from occasional circumstances to their own personal experience with children, whether it is paternity / maternity or simple closeness. How to relate to their small world and the conventions linked to it is a complex matter.
A new disc-book resulting from the collaboration of two artists – actress and composer – offers unconventional results.
The story of the Little Fish written and recited by Sonia Bergamasco and set to music by Mauro Cardi is, we could say, a completely different story from the usual CD-books produced by children’s publishing. She, the Bergamasco, author-actress, is known to the general public for having given life to one of the most touching characters in recent filmography, Giulia, the terrorist of The Best of Youth who played the piano without a stunt double. But particularly interesting for us is his musical training and acting as a reciting voice in a repertoire that from the melologists of Liszt, to Schönberg, to Corghi expresses a rare combination in which music and acting are interchanged thanks to professional skills of rare quality.
He, Cardi, the composer, is one of the most successful and interesting authors of our contemporary scene with a linguistic path that from Donatoni’s Roman school to the use of electro-acoustic technologies embraces a wide range of action.
Pesciolino is an original kit, created by Eurografica publisher and distributed by Armando Curcio, in which a book in the shape of
fish opening reveals itself as a double-sided puzzle with the text of the nursery rhyme transcribed in Italian and English. «I have been writing for a long time – Bergamasco tells us -, and when I was waiting for Valeria, my first child, I thought of creating something concrete that would translate from the writing into an object. Little fish was born with the heart and is recited and set to music following the rhythm of my baby’s heart in one of the latest ultrasound scans ». In reality, the small fish “drinker who rhythms his long exploration to sob time” and who “dripped bubbles that he threw in the dance” is precisely the child
in his prenatal life and Mauro Cardi’s skilful sound processing uses sampled natural sounds, inserting them into the rhythm of the beat. Aquatic sounds, therefore, in which other reverbs are inserted.
“Musical sounds arise from the sound of words – says Cardi – and the rhythm of Sonia’s recitation, so dry and far from the traditional narrative way, has great evocative abilities”. What are the reactions of the children towards such a singular union? Of curiosity, certainly. The sound world created by vocal and electroacoustic sounds stimulates their imagination and their ability to perception, more lively and flexible than that of adults, who in turn can read ‘beyond’, discover and make people discover the different meanings. The little fish will not remain alone: ​​Bergamasco and Cardi are preparing a small promising bestiary for the series of “The Friends of the Wise Caterpillar”, with the collaboration of the painter Giancarlo Savino and the participation of illustrious sponsors.