{"id":4316,"date":"2014-12-18T01:11:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T00:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/?p=4316"},"modified":"2025-08-22T18:13:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:13:31","slug":"invisible-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/4316","title":{"rendered":"Invisible Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/invisiblecitiesopera.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Invisible Cities<\/em><\/a> (2013) \u00e8 un&#8217;opera di <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophercerrone.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Christopher Cerrone<\/a>, compositore e librettista, ispirata alle <em>Citt\u00e0 Invisibili<\/em> di Calvino, pubblicato nel 1972.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4328\" style=\"margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" title=\"INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross\" src=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross.jpg\" alt=\"INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross\" width=\"550\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross.jpg 3415w, https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross-150x99.jpg 150w, https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/INVISIBLE-CITIES-production-photo-by-Dana-Ross-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a>La fruizione \u00e8 inusuale. Il palcoscenico \u00e8 la storica Union Station di Los Angeles. Non c&#8217;\u00e8 separazione fra gli strumentisti, i danzatori, i cantanti e il pubblico: tutti si aggirano per la stazione e il pubblico pu\u00f2 ascoltare la musica dovunque, essendo dotato di cuffie wireless (il main sponsor \u00e8 Sennheiser). E devo dire che ambientare quello che, sia pure solo in superficie, \u00e8 un racconto di viaggi in un luogo deputato ai viaggi \u00e8 una bella idea.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Perch\u00e9 l&#8217;opera narra, appunto, il racconto di Marco Polo a Kublai Khan. I suoi viaggi e le favolose citt\u00e0 che ha visto: alcune reali, altre frutto dell&#8217;immaginazione. Citt\u00e0 di desiderio, di segni, e di memoria.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">La musica \u00e8 semplice, quasi minimalista, di quella tipica tonalit\u00e0 americana che, grazie alla ripetizione, annulla il dramma tonale per diventare quasi drone music (ma si pu\u00f2 anche sentirvi la netta influenza di <em>Escalator Over The Hill<\/em> di cui potete leggere fra i collegamenti, sotto). Nel player, qui sotto, potete ascoltarne una parte, ma il modo migliore per farsi un&#8217;idea \u00e8 andare sull&#8217;apposita pagina dove si possono vedere dei video ad alta risoluzione, girati nella Union Station, con audio molto buono.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"INVISIBLE CITIES Official Trailer\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VFeaSdGb2zc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Artbound Special Episode &quot;Invisible Cities&quot;\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GyceQFpSOjI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Note dal sito dell&#8217;autore:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The music of Invisible Cities is the result of my first collision with Calvino\u2019s extraordinary novel. For years I had been unable to bridge categories of music, thinking that a work could be either lyrical or conceptually rigorous, but not both. Calvino\u2019s novel, however, is both a tightly structured mathematical work, yet also opens with the gorgeous line:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cIn the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After reading that sentence\u2014so pregnant with meaning, lyricism, mood\u2014I immediately began composing. I imagined the sound of a unearthly resonant and gong-like prepared piano, the ringing of bells, and wind players gently blowing air through their instruments. All of this would support a lyrical and deep voiced Kublai Khan who is slow moving and sings with gravitas. I imagined there would be two women, two high sopranos, who always sing together in harmony: they would be the musical personification of the cities that pervade the novel. And of course, our Italian explorer would be a tenor, light and quick moving, melismatic, and deft.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As with Calvino, there are many formally derived components to my opera. The orchestra is split into two (left and right) halves which alternate melodies to create the whole. The left part is associated Marco Polo, the right is associated with Kublai Khan. And the opera is structured as formally as the novel, always alternating Polo and the Khan\u2019s conversations with Polo\u2019s stories of le citt\u00e0.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To borrow a term from of one of Calvino\u2019s favorite writers, Jorge Luis Borges, Invisible Cities is a garden of forking paths. As the work progresses, you might find yourself wandering back to the same place in Union Station again and again only to find new things happening each time. In the same way, the same few musical ideas of Invisible Cities are revisited again and again, just from vastly different perspectives. As we grow and evolve, the same objects in our lives can acquire such different meanings. That above else governs what Invisible Cities is about: how our memories change as we get older, how our map of the world gets larger, and how our past is always being changed by our ever-shifting present.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"related-posts\">\n<div id=\"related-posts-MRP_all\" class=\"related-posts-type\">\n<h3>RELATED:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/4109\">Requiem elettroacustico<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/2329\">Shadowtime<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/2203\">Escalator over the hill<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Invisible Cities (2013) \u00e8 un&#8217;opera di Christopher Cerrone, compositore e librettista, ispirata alle Citt\u00e0 Invisibili di Calvino, pubblicato nel 1972. La fruizione \u00e8 inusuale. Il palcoscenico \u00e8 la storica Union Station di Los Angeles. Non c&#8217;\u00e8 separazione fra gli strumentisti, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/archives\/4316\">Continua a leggere<span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[940,991],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strumentale-mus","tag-opera","tag-usa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19023,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions\/19023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maurograziani.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}