projects

Raffaele Grimaldi - Lucia Ronchetti

Florilegium
Studio da Gesualdo
for vocal ensemble, choir and orchestra (2013)
Text from the original with fragments from Goethe, Rilke,
Uhland, Morgernstern, von Birken, Klaj and Silesius
selected by Marie Luise Knott and Raffaele Grimaldi
Commission: Teatro di San Carlo
First performance: 3-10-2014 Napoli, Stagione sinfonica del Teatro di San Carlo
Neue Vocalsolisten, Orchestra e coro del Teatro di San Carlo
(Gabriele Ferro), conductor
Publisher: Edizioni musicali Rai Trade
Duration: ca. 30 m

Florilegium tried to emphasize the sculptural effect of Gesualdo's musical texture, the play of full and void, as an acoustic mirror of Borromini's architecture. The drammaturgy propose a dialog between Gesualdo himself and the world outside.  The intimate voice of the composer, based on transcriptions from the V and VI books of Madrigals,  is confided to the choir and the orchestra. The external life is represented by ephemeral and transparent interventions of the vocal ensemble.  The six soloists give voice to a sequence based on the Elegie Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen written by Goethe in 1798. The whirling reportage of the evolution of vegetal life, from the darkness of the earth to the orderly explosion caused by the light and warmth, as conjured by Goethe, is interrupted by some poetical portrait of flowers:  the Rose by Silesius, the Blaue Hortensie by Rainer Maria Rilke or the Traubenhyazinthe by Barthold Hinrich Brockes.

Teatro di San Carlo (Photo by Marco Innamorati)