L'Angelo e il Golem
Variazioni scenico-musicali by
Francesco La Licata
Scenario by Fabrizio Lupo
Texts selected
from Marguerite Yourcenar, the Talmud,
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Fabrizio Lupo,
Gershom Scholem, Wallace Stevens
Giuseppe Caltagirone (tenor) -
L'alchimista [The Alchemist]
Marie-Luce Erard (mezzo-soprano) - La madre [The
Mother]
Maurizio Maiorana (actor) - Il puparo [The Puppeteer]
Angelo
Manzotti (sopranist) - L'angelo [The Angel]
Antonio Politano (Paetzold double-bass recorder)
-
Il suonatore di flauto [The Recorder Player]
Giuseppe
La Licata (actor) - L'inventore [The Inventor]
Caroline Lang (actress) -
Agata
Sergio Lo Verde (actor) - L'essere del fuoco [The
Fire-Being]
Fontana Mix
Zephir Ensemble
Francesco La Licata
(conductor)
Fabrizio Lupo (stage and film direction)
Francesco La
Licata, Fabrizio Lupo (dramaturgy)
Thursday 23 and Friday 24 October
2003
Teatro Cavallerizza, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Presented by
REC (Reggio Emilia Contemporanea) — Festival d'Autunno
The word golem appears only once in the Bible (Psalm 139: 16),
where it refers to an unformed Adam, not yet animated by God the Creator with
the holy Breath of Life. Yet from the first centuries of the Christian Era, the
figure of the golem has inspired mystical Jewish legends, ranging from a
pre-Adam of cosmic dimensions and strength, who, before receiving his soul, had
a vision of all creation, to the tales of rabbis who magically brought to life
men of clay by writing on their foreheads the word emeth (Hebrew for
"truth") and took life away by erasing the initial e, changing the word
to meth (Hebrew for "death").
With L'Angelo e il Golem, the Sicilian composer Francesco La Licata and dramatist Fabrizio Lupo propose that the creation of a work of art is a transfiguration of the golem myth. The animating core of this set of "scenic-musical variations" (originally produced in 2000 by the Teatro Massimo of Palermo and premiered in northern Italy with these performances three years later) is the fundamental desire of mankind to create life — and how, in myth and literature, the illusion of success in such a task is followed by powerlessness to control the results.
L'Angelo e il Golem draws on a cluster of traditions, tying together the threatening monster of the 16th-century Rabbi Löw of Prague with later interpretations of the golem as a symbol of modern technology and the sin of hubris by Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), the Brothers Grimm, E.T.A. Hoffmann, von Arnim and Gustav Meyrink.
In L'Angelo, the challenge of creating a golem is narrated (in
experimental fashion), set to music, staged and filmed — this
overflowing intertextuality makes the work a challenge within a challenge. The
libretto incorporates fragments of Marguerite Yourcenar, the Talmud, E.T.A.
Hoffmann, Gershom Scholem and Wallace Stevens; the setting has been transferred
from Prague to Palermo — according to Lupo and La Licata, both are
"cities of puppets and puppeteers, of coarse inns and arcane courtyards ... full
of charm and mystery." The stage itself positively bursts with characters: an
Inventor, an Alchemist, a Puppeteer (in the tradition of Sicilian cunto
storytelling) and a Player of double-bass recorder (which symbolizes the divine
Breath of Life and the original sound of the earth) — all these act
alongside and against archetypes: the Mother (repository of the secret of life),
the Little Girl (an earthly angel) and the Angel. This last is Walter Benjamin's
Angelus Novus, the angel of history, invisible or half-seen but as desperately
present as in Wim Wenders's movies or Savinio's metaphysical paintings
— a sort of future alternative to the golem's earthly past.
Lupo uses a complex apparatus to articulate his cosmography. There were two symmetrical tiers of seating for the audience at the Teatro Cavallerizza, with screens for film projections hanging on two opposite sides of the stage in the center and the composer-conductor leading everything from a gigantic wooden pulpit. Eight film fragments recounted the story of the Inventor's ill-fated attempts at creation, culminating in the Golem's escape and the great fire of Prague/Palermo. Intertwined with the film sequences were seven live-action scenes focused on the psychological aspects of the drama; these were enacted by opera singers, actors, speakers and two varied — and ambulatory — instrumental ensembles, Zephir and Fontana Mix. La Licata, a former assistant to Aldo Clementi and Iannis Xenakis, has produced a score (over)saturated with musical eclecticism: you can hear a street band with accordion, brass and violin; the inflections of Jewish Klezmer music; the composer's own recasting of a Sicilian cuntrastu; and such contemporary-music tropes as fortissimo tone clusters, Glassian string arpeggios, improvisational sections and Theatermusik effects like rubbing a bow on the xylophone or stomping and shouts from the musicians on stage.
Out of this intentionally overcharged extravaganza, snapshots of great value did emerge: the deep and rich mezzo of Marie-Luce Erard (the Mother) pleading the cause of natural procreation ("Robots have no soul!") in the third scene; the breath-like sound of the Paetzold double-bass recorder opening and closing the opera and, in Scene Two, creating a mysterious counterpoint in the style of medieval organum duplum with a singer intoning a Talmudic text. But the star of the evening was the sopranist Angelo Manzotti, a specialist in the Baroque repertoire of the castrati. His flexible, wide-ranging voice brought a touch of magic to the lunatic intervals of the final aria, a tribute to Handel in Licata's eclectic modernist style.
Is there perhaps a moral amidst the mishmash? L'Angelo ends with a
fragment of silent film: the man-Golem leans on a well, where the water
symbolizes his struggle for knowledge. The four elements are rejoined: creation
is served.
