Le silence des sirènes
What remains of singing when the voice disappears? Composer Francesca Verunelli's far-reaching question is inspired by Kafka's tale of the mermaids, in which they don't sing. A voice without song, like an instrumental body? The Italian composer imagines an imposing work, a comprehensive evening, first performed in Venice, Stuttgart, Lyon, Marseille, and Paris. These five songs, "without voice" but with the precious assistance of the Neue Vocalsolisten, travel to the two extremes of absence and presence, the song in the voice and the voice without the song. There will be an aphone movement, not using the vocal cords. A love song with acoustic guitar, in the griko language (ancient Greek and languages of Salento), a movement on vocal and acoustic spectrums, with mouth harmonicas, a song of migration, movement towards the unknown of a polyrhythmic and microtonal polyphony. A creation on the periphery of that which composes it.
Ensemble C Barré
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart
Sébastien Boin conductor
Antonello Pocetti director
Jean Millot electronics
Francesca Verunelli Songs and Voices - Premiere 2023
supported by l’aide à l’écriture d’une œuvre musicale nouvelle originale from the French Ministry of Culture, commissioned by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, the Venise Biennial, the festival ECLAT, the GMEM – Centre national de création musicale, the GRAME
Five Songs (Kafka’s Sirens)
by Francesca Verunelli