projects

L'ape apatica
Gioco concertante
Music theatre for children
for treble voices, soprano, trombone, percussion, tape and live electronics (2001)
Text and drawings by Toti Scialoja
Commission: Teatro Sociale, Rovigo/Teatro la Fenice, Venezia/Federazione Cemat, Rome
First performance: 7-3-2002, Venice: Teatro La Fenice, Venice
Paola Matarrese (soprano), Vincenzo Montenitro (trombone), Nunzio di Corato (percussion), Treble Voices of the Conservatorio of Rovigo, Maurizio Giri (live electronics), Roberto Carotenuto (video animation), Marina Malavasi, (conductor), Luca Paccagnella (conductor), Thierry Parmentier (direction and stage design)

Publisher: Edizioni Rai Trade
Duration: 30’

“L’ape apatica” is a one-act music theatre project in 18 micro-scenes based on the poetic bestiary created by Toti Scialoja for children (poems and drawings). The 18 poems are collected in order to cast an ideal day-long cycle, from early morning to dusk. Each poem is developed into a scene representing a surreal and comic animal and the combination of the scenes produces a kaleidoscopic work transforming the theatre in a sort of magical lantern.
The reading of the children on stage reveals the pantomimic potentiality of the poems and exhibits the internal tangle of linguistic elaborations. The soloists on stage (voice, trombone and percussion) sustain and amplify the concrete animal noises evoked by the writing.
“La ranocchia che sgranocchia”, “la farfalla che farfuglia”, “la libellula zitella”, “la cicala rauca”, “la vanessa vanesia”, “l’ape apatica” are some of the characters that the children on stage are asked to interpret, highlighting the special idea of fabula ideated by Scialoja, a cross between the nonsense surrealism of Edward Leer and the delicacy of Italo Calvino. The project is about transformation and metamorphosis of special onomatopoetic words collocated in an enchanted sound forest of signs.

Drawings by Toti Scialoja and musical excerpts from the first performance