Salvatore Sciarrino - Da Gelo a Gelo (2006) [live]

Composer : Salvatore Sciarrino

Da gelo a gelo ("From one frost to the next") is an opera in 100 scenes (some lasting as little as 3') by Salvatore Sciarrino. The composer's Italian libretto is based on one year (1002-3) and 65 poems from the journal of Izumi Shikibu encompassing her affair with Prince Atsumishi.
The opera was a co-commission of the Schwetzingen Festival, the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Opéra National de Paris and premiered in the rococo Schwetzingen Castle theatre under the German title Kälte on May 21, 2006. The choreography for the singers by Trisha Brown was retained for the 2007 Paris production at the Palais Garnier. The piece lasts 110 minutes.

Conductor: Tito Ceccherini

Roles:
Izumi Anna Radziejewska Soprano
The Prince's nurse/ Izumi's maid: Ulrike Mayer (Mezzo-Soprano)
Izumi's page: Felix Uehlein (Contraltino)
The Prince's page: Michael Hofmeister (Counter-tenor)
The Prince: Otto Katzameier (Baritone)

Premiere Cast - Recorded on May 21, 2006, at Schwetzingen - Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart del SWR


REVIEW :
"Da gelo a gelo", Rococo Theatre, Schwetzingen
By Shirley Apthorp

Published: May 23 2006

In 11th-century Japan, the services of personal pages enabled love notes to be exchanged with a frequency to rival today’s text messaging. The urgency and sentiments were similar but literary standards were, to put it mildly, higher.
Izumi Shikibu was one of Japan’s greatest poets. Her only work of prose is the diary she kept during the turbulent year of her affair with Prince Atsumichi. The progress of the relationship, traced by the rapid exchange of succinct notes, is the theme of Salvatore Sciarrino’s Da gelo a gelo (From Frost to Frost), given its world premiere in Schwetzingen last weekend.
This is the third opera that the 59-year-old Italian composer has written for Schwetzingen’s gem-like Rococo Palace Theatre, home to South West Radio’s annual festival, and his 12th work of music theatre. Sciarrino knows his medium intimately – and inimitably. His subtle sound world of whispered and scraped orchestral secrets, his scampering recitatives and angular vocal lyricism, his ironic quotations (here the March Militär, there Tristan und Isolde) are all pure Sciarrino, a distinctively onomatopoeic vocabulary of sensual sounds woven together into a complex, organic whole.
New is the choice of subject. Shikibu’s writing walks a tightrope between restraint and abandon, chaste with a hint of the orgiastic, and the style is perfectly suited to Sciarrino’s introspective music. Its themes and nuances are timeless. The composer has written his own libretto (“100 scenes with 65 poems”), a spare narrative of melancholic grace, following the four seasons from attraction to disaster.
An unpretentious production keeps the focus on the text. Trisha Brown’s muted choreography makes dance of opera, and profits greatly from the limber dramatic skills of the main protagonists. In traditional Japanese dress (costumes: Elizabeth Cannon) on a bare stage (sets: Daniel Jeanneteau), Anna Radziejewska and Otto Katzameier hold us spellbound as the poet and her prince. Both combine physical grace with phenomenal vocal agility and musical intelligence, she with an edge of icy soprano strength, he with melting baritonal warmth. The minor roles are beautifully cast, and the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra delivers solid playing under Tito Ceccherini’s sensitive direction.