Danilo Comitini: The Selfish Giant (Oscar Wilde), The Black Cat (Edgar Allan Poe), 2 Melologues

Description

In the eighteenth century, the solo voice became the epicenter of a genre of composition that was the result of the Enlightenment’s desire to encyclopedically synthesize several arts into a single work. That form, the melologue, established itself mainly in France as a genre of spoken word theater and in fact involves acting with musical accompaniment, without the slightest intonation of the voice. The cantata Ariadne auf Naxos is considered one of the earliest and most significant examples of the new genre. Among the most important melologues, we cannot fail to mention the Pygmalion – considered the first melologue in history – composed in 1762 by Horace Coignet and Jean Jacques Rousseau (who wrote not only the libretto but also part of the music). Czech composer Georg Benda was an unsurpassed master in the genre, profoundly influencing the young Mozart. Melologue composition of an entire drama, however, initially remained the preserve of Bohemian musicians. In Italy and Germany the genre never rose to the development of an entire opera but remained confined to individual episodes within musical works, dramas or non-theatrical compositions. Beethoven, for example, makes use of it in Fidelio, in the scene in which the protagonist, disguised as a man, visits the prison in which her groom is imprisoned. Equally famous are Weber’s uses in Freischütz and Mendelssohn’s in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Robert Schumann’s Manfred – a preclear example of Literaturoper – based on George Byron’s opera of the same name, totally sets aside operatic-style solo singing, making mainly use of monologues by the protagonist and emphasizing through music only the climaxes. Ballads for declamation with instrumental accompaniment – such as Schubert’s Abschied von der Erde, Schön Hedwig, Schumann’s Vom Heidenknaben and Fugitives, Hiller’s Vom Pagen und der Königstöchter, Liszt’s Lenore and Träuriger Mönch, and Strauss’s Enoch Arden – also approach this type of form. The tendency toward the melologue influences all opera practice, one need only think of the Prologue of Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, which is represented entirely by Tonio’s monologue after an instrumental introduction. In this case, the character’s intervention – and consequently the monologue – serves as the author’s programmatic manifesto, which enunciates the informing principles and poetics of the opera. In modern times the melologue takes on the connotations of an independent form. Let us consider, for example, the protagonist’s monologue in Richard Strauss’s Elektra (“Allein, weh, ganz allein,” “Alone, alas, all alone”). It serves narratively to reenact the murder of her father Agamemnon but it is also the first manifestation of the horrific chord on which the entire tragedy will be tuned, with the iteration of the word Blut (blood) dominating the entire narrative, along with other emblematic terms. Remaining in the sphere of the same composer, let us also recall the third part of the opera Salome. It describes the confrontation between two characters: the protagonist and the totally silent interlocutor of the beheaded head of the Baptist. The confrontation obviously resolves itself into a long monologue, one of the longest in the history of opera, in which Salome continually addresses Jochanaan, questioning him, continually repeating his name and soliciting a response, until she finally closes his mouth with the desired kiss. Herod and Herodias watch from the sidelines, finally resulting in the killing of Salome, perpetrated in an explosion of wind instruments and percussions. In contemporary times the melologue takes on entirely different connotations. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Morte di Borromini, for orchestra with reader, collects the last accounts of Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. The latter died by suicide, piercing himself with a sword, following a fit of rage dictated by his servant’s refusal to light a lamp to allow him to write his will. The writing strikes the composer for its lucidity and sense of the man’s tragedy, often ignored by his next of kin. In this work, the music neither pretends nor sets out to describe, merely surrounding what is, after all, the reading of a document. It seems clear that over the centuries individual expression has found multiple outlets in musical expression, resulting in an ever-increasing distance between the speaking subject and the music, which ends up being reduced to a mere accompanying gesture, totally independent of the text and determining an estrangement common in every genre of contemporary art form. The melologue is the genre chosen by Danilo Comitini to address the genre of the short story. The Black Cat and The Selfish Giant are works both belonging to English and nineteenth-century literary production. The Black Cat is among the most famous tales of Edgar Allan Poe’s production, moreover the subject of boundless horror film literature, ranging from 1920, with the film of the same name directed by Charles Kraus, to 2007 with that directed by Stuart Gordon. Where The Black Cat gradually leads the protagonist – and the story itself – toward the deepest abysses, in The Selfish Giant Oscar Wilde – in the completely opposite direction – gradually leads the protagonist in the direction of redemption and forgiveness. “I think the text-music combination has always been extremely effective,” the composer explains, “the melologue gives the music that second face that makes its features more visible and expressive, and thus makes it more penetrating, easier to enjoy.” The Selfish Giant follows a different compositional mode than The Black Cat: “the events of the story shape the music by means of the emotions that accompanied the reading and genesis of the work. It is as if the music were a set – extremely and continuously changing – but still serving as a background function. The “soundscape” – as the composer calls it – always stands at some distance from the characters who metaphorically enter the scene and does not interact with the narrated events. “One could say that the music reacts but does not interact with the words. Just as in the story the narrator is external, not interacting with the story, in the same way I did not want the music and the reader to come into too much contact. It is as if the music here takes the place of the illustrations in a book, emphasizing or explaining the meaning of the words.” This is exactly the opposite of what happens in The Black Cat, where it can be said that the music does not interact with the words but forms a single body with them. It is often the music alone that speaks and acts, almost taking the place of the narrator, who in fact corresponds here to the protagonist of the story. The sounds are no longer mere scenography, but embodiment of the story itself. “In general I have tried to exploit as much as possible the double possibility, which the melologue offers, of leaving either the words or the music alone from time to time, with all possible gradations and nuances.” There are varying degrees of overlap between music and text, as well as waiting times and breaths between the end of the music and the beginning of the recitation and vice versa, where in The Selfish Giant music and voice overlap only in a few moments. Characteristic then is the use of melody in a tonal sense, employed not nostalgically, as we often tend to think today. In The Black Cat, for example, we witness the obsessive repetition of certain pitches from the beginning to the end of the piece, which thus appear “recognizable,” embodying the feelings, fears and obsessions of the protagonist of the story, whose horrible collapse leads to the inevitable destruction of any melodic sequence, tearing apart harmonies and leaving room – as had occurred in Strauss’s Salome – for harsh timbres, especially of percussion instruments.
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