Die Musiktheaterproduktion "Il canto della pelle (SEX unlimited)" aus dem Jahre 2006 der Pocket Opera Company Nürnberg wurde 2008 vom Internationalen Theater Institut / Deutschland - Music Theatre Now ausgezeichnet. Diese in Koproduktion mit Grame, dem Centre national de création musicale Lyon und der fabrica Carena di Villorba und in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Stadttheater Fürth, der Opera National de Lyon, dem Teatro Comunale di Treviso und mit Unterstützung der EU im Rahmen "Culture 2000" entstandene Oper von dem zeitgenössischen, italienischen Komponisten Claudio Ambrosini, wurde in der Regie von Peter Beat Wyrsch und der Ausstattung von Evelyn Straulino in Lyon am 24. März 2006 uraufgeführt.
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A Pocket Opera with sexuality as the theme.

The score
calls for vocal soloists, a small chorus, an instrumental ensemble and electronics (as well as live-electronics). One or two actor/dancers will be needed.

 

 

The opera
is planned for an unorthodox venue and will use effects such as photography, television and comics.

 

The atmosphere
The Company: Four singers play many different roles; an actress plays a young woman, who openly behaves like a slut. The dancer is an observer.

The stage has a white set with a sloping screen, soft and gentle. The musicians are part of the scenery.

The action: The beginning shows a cheerful and playful ensemble. The whole evening is totally filled with atmosphere.

A serious face appears, looking into a strange world. An Indian man brings water on stage. A glittering expanse of water pushes itself forward. Multicoloured pigments fall down like rain on two girls. They celebrate their bodies and the moistened skin lets one guess the form. Their bodies change into a love-in on an Indian temple frieze. The observer breathes with them.

Abrupt change: A medieval stone wall separates two people, who feel squeezed in. They crave for each other, they suffer in dark dungeons; their bodies crave for each other without a chance. Their spirituality is all the stronger. The isolation of their souls reflects more and more an endless lost landscape. The observer breathes with them. He takes off his clothes very slowly. He finds himself in a dance; he is completely naked. He feels good and in harmony with himself. He recognizes himself in the water. The water is in motion, his identity blurs, who is he, and what does he feel.

The man is beautiful and he is desired. The woman is completely crazy for him. He however is satisfied with himself and in love with his body. Another woman observes the excited woman. She desires her. All three persons remain with their selves and their desires.

Cut. Two ridiculously fat slops with medical instruments control the scene, grotesque and cruel at the same time. They both try to stuff pills into each others mouth. Two old witches appear as silhouettes. A medical potion lets them feel young and desirable. Cheerful tendency.

Cut. Total darkness: Pictures of desirable bodies change quickly. A woman tells of telephone sex. More voices penetrate from the surroundings into the area. They definitely have something to tell, sexual experiences, the search for lust, sexual urge, and sexual demands. Voices crack, shrill sounds, screams. Pictures - bodies pile up, events follow hot on each other’s heels, and a claustrophobic atmosphere is created.

Cut. The woman in leather and lacquer appears, loud, demanding, turned on. She prostitutes herself, she glitters. Figures appear, distorted, artificial, and abnormal. The bodies loose control of themselves, give the audience the come on. The former observer is now part of the audience. He goes along with the game. He assumes their deformation, becomes a part of the game. The woman makes promises which she can never hold. She is part of the system. Compulsion is in the air. The compulsion is transported to the observer. He frees himself from it though and searches for ideal human beings, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s figure of Vitruv which he created. But the promised peace loses it’s balance. A sensual dance between the woman and the observer begins. The man and the woman meet, discover themselves; get a feeling for each other. The contact leads to great harmony.

Claudio Ambrosini

...lives in Venice. He has composed vocal works, instrumental and electronic compositions. His method of composing shows a great linguistic perspective. Ambrosini has won prizes at many international festivals, such as at the ‚festival of contemporary music' of the biennial in Venice, in Strassburg, Avignon, Brussels, Montreal, Madrid, Prague, Huddersfield. In 1996, his comic opera "The world judgement" was published. In 1998, there was a scenic concert performance at the castle theatre in Ludwigsburg of his "Casanova Gala".

 

 

Translation of F. J. Bröder’s Review

(The bizarre sex scenario "Il canto della pelle – Sex unlimited or: The skin song" in the German premiere production of the Pocket Opera Company Nuremberg in the Culture Forum of the Furth Theater- a European production – music and libretto from Claudio Ambrosini)

Pictures of lust, of pornography and perversion, in video sequences driven to the extreme, a naked dancer in a "pas de deux" with a bottle and its reflection in water, in addition Italian bel canto, an atonal background noise, spherical strains, voluptuous marionettes, colorful fantasy costumes and Venetian beaked masks – a passionate complete work of art made up of pictures, sounds, voices and melodic strains, lights, projections and color effects – the Pocket Opera Company pulls all the registers once again and conjures up a bizarre story album for a provocative – a risky theme. The German premiere of “Il canto della pelle” can now be seen in the Culture Forum of the Furth Theater. The piece, called a “comic melodrama of sex unlimited” in the sub-title, is supposed to show unbounded sexuality. The work, commissioned by the French ministry of culture, received its world premiere in Lyon in March, as a "European Project Culture 2000". Now the experimental – avant-garde Pocket Opera presents the work in co-operation with the Furth Theater.

Peter Beat Wyrsch, the founder of the Pocket Opera, directed this chamber opera by Claudio Ambrosini. Ambrosini, who studied with Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono, wrote the modernistic music and the libretto as well. Stefano Celeghini conducted the chamber orchestra "Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain de Lyon". The singers Sonia Visentin, soprano and Annie Vavrille, mezzo soprano, Philippe Do, tenor and Claude Darbellay, baritone, as well as the actress Anna Schmutz-Lacroix and the dancer Andonis Foniadakis completed the cast.

A well sung, danced and acted history of the culture of sexuality with texts from Kamasutra to Sappho, from mysticism to modern times. The bizarre sex scenario covers in eight scenes all varieties of eroticism, the natural instinct of human sexuality on its civilizing way from the garden of Eden to religion, mythology, culture, science and society up to prostitution and telephone sex, to cyber sex in internet, even child pornography, portrayed in quickly changing picture sequences

It is a monstrous, often poetic-tender, lyric-musical, and an often smutty-course spectacle that does not stop short of taboos. There are extremely realistic vocal and spoken descriptions of sexual marketing, sadomasochism and fetishism. A Domina seduces the audience and bids them to touch her, thereby turning herself literally into a melodious instrument. There are bewitching and repelling scenes of lust, frivolous copulation with a bulging sex-monster, the erotic sculptures freeze – held in suspense by the alienating music, extreme coloratura arias, traumatic noise carpets and Far East tone clusters. – Hesitating applause by the irritated audience for an upsetting, at the same time highly artificial journey through the lust, with which the Pocket Opera Company, after a long while, once more dared to tread a new path.

Friedrich J. Bröder