"What do you want from me?
- I'd like to do a portrait of your voice.
- Then this is my portrait.
- No. I think your voice and you are not the same thing."
A family of voice portraits lives its sonic life. A tangle of sounds and affections, suspended between Renaissance polyphony and family din.
Alessandro Bosetti, sound artist and composer, paints a series of portraits from a documentary work and conversations recorded in Italy during a summer. He chose and collected six voices articulated over three generations, three of female gender and three of male gender. He then disassembled and assembled them into a palimpsest that integrates three elements: polyphonic writing, collage of thousands of fragments and writing for a portraitist.
A cloud of voices, charged like a thunderstorm, makes the audience experience all the emotions of an imaginary and magical community through an immersive and polyphonic musical writing while the portraitist shares this choral narrative with the audience, who find themselves immersed in a tightly packed crowd, both claustrophobic and nourishing (specific to each family).
In the background, half hidden: the identities of the six anonymous models speak for themselves, of a country loved and hated, in an everyday language impregnated with the present.
Only the voices count, which, as markers of an absolute generality, resemble souls to which an identity has not yet been attributed.
The GMEM is pleased to continue its partnership with the Ensemble Neue Vocalsolisten of Stuttgart with this creation.
Delegated production
GMEM - Centre national de création musicale
Coproduction
Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Neue Vocalsolisten, Musik Der Jahrhunderte, Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil - center dramatique national, La Soufflerie
With the help of the Ministry of Culture forthe writing
of an original musical work
Support
Impuls neue Musik Laureate 2020 of the Franco-German-Swiss Fund for Contemporary Music, partner of the Goethe Institute and the French Institute
Technical Sponsor
Fondazione Bonotto
Spatialization and musical computing
Pierre Fleurence
Alessandro Bosetti's work is based on the musicality of voice, language and languages. He explores the border between spoken language and music.
DURATION
50 min.
Alessandro Bosetti
composer, sound artist, portraitist
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart
vocal ensemble
Johanna Vargas
soprano
Truike van der Poel
mezzo soprano
Martin Nagy
tenor
Guillermo Anzorena
baritone
Andreas Fischer
bass
Giovanni Donadini / Canedicoda
costume designer
Lucie Delorme
lighting designer
Philippe Boinon
sound and general management
EN 2022
November 5 - Kontraklang festival, Villa Elisabeth, Berlin (DE)
IN 2021
December 16 - Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, Festival Mesure pour Mesure 2021, Montreuil (93)
October 8 - Theaterhaus, Festival Musik der Jahrhunderte, Stuttgart (DE)
May 15 - Propagations, GMEM festival, Marseille
