Pierrot Solaire by Luisa Sello

Italian flutist Luisa Sello is presenting her new instrumental theatre project Pierrot Solaire. She is giving a concert on Friday, April 24th, at Mimara Museum, which accentuates the gestuality in the performance model...

The gesture, taken to its expressive estreme, emphasizes the poetics of the composers and exalts their intentions using a network of simbologies which reflect atmospheres, legends and places of memory.

The concert, by means of micro-dramatization and several techniques used in musical theatre, accetuates the gestuality which accompanies the performance model. This means that the interpreter is not just a mediator between the written page and the audience, but she also becomes an actress in her own performance.

Pierrot Solaire has been performed at the Viennese Musikverein, at the Concert Hall of the Beijing Conservatory, as well as at Tokyo's Sala Agnelli, captivating listeners of all ages - from the youngest ones to the most faithful concert-goers. The text that complements the show has for this reason been translated in several languages, with the help of actors and language lecturers.

Starting from the position of Arnold Schönberg, who questioned traditional canons of performance at the beginning of the twentieth century, Pierrot Solaire accepts the premises of the Viennese composer while insisting on gestural expression, which is deliberately representational and is placed in a mimetic relationship with the text. The narration follows the flow of the music, which allows for the changes of lighting and costumes. The text is inspired by the poetics and the atmospheres of the music itself, contrary to the habitual practice of previous centuries.

Pierrot, an enchanted girl, enters the world of “humans” to remind them of virtues they only too often tend to forget. Magic rites celebrate her arrival in the city of Perla, governed by superficiality, indifference and haste. Patera, the snake god, a demon that takes possession of people’s thoughts when they are asleep, is the personification of evil, envy and individualism. Only the union of the most profound values will successfully annihilate his power. The same Patera, guardian of supressed virtues, creates a little “rogue”, a boy with golden skin who, interlacing his fingers with those of the sweet Pierrot, begins a journey towards a world of knowledge and freedom of expression. They are accompanied by a hidden melody of Johann Sebastian Bach, a symbol of the force of the absolute value of art.