FIGLI DI UN DIO UBRIACO. Incursioni fisiche sui Madrigali di Claudio Monteverdi

A project commissioned by Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona and the Festival of Montepulciano, framed around the work of composer Claudio Monteverdi, FIGLI DI UN DIO UBRIACO. Incursioni fisiche sui Madrigali di Claudio Monteverdi is the new choreographic-musical venture of Michela Lucenti for her dance company Balletto Civile.

With the live accompaniment of the Cremona Antiqua Orchestra conducted by Maestro Antonio Greco and of two opera singers, this creation is a contemporary reinterpretation of various Baroque topoi, combined with the performance of eight madrigals from Monteverdi's endless production and of other musical works of the same composer and of contemporary authors such as Barbara Strozzi, interspersed with a contemporary sound design.

«Fascinated by the studies of Tomaso Montanari, one of the top experts on the Baroque,» Michela Lucenti explains, «we discovered how central the condition of the body and of sensuality were in that period of history. Montanari speaks specifically of “the sensuality of desperate lives”, of the continuous transformation of bodies, citing Bernini's Daphne as an example, ambiguous and in the process of metamorphosis. A perfect link to Balletto Civile's poetics, centred on fragility and life on the edge, which we have used to design this epic of everyday life peopled by anti-heroes. Shaping the pastoral, warrior and love themes of Monteverdi's madrigals to suit our needs, to build a discourse that is consistent with our style and our human “bandwagon”. The "basso continuo" of human resistance combines with the sounds of a drunken everyday life, producing images that expand outwardly and magnify our emotions». Twelve performers on stage, including a little girl and even Lucenti's seventy-six-year-old father, actors, performers and dancers, a blow-up of a cross-section of humanity. A performance that lasts almost two hours and showcases, as in the composer's life, reflections on today and on the identity that work gives to man.