Musical pantomime in one act and 21 scenes

Expressive techniques: mime, dance, songs, acting, acrobatics, stilts

Length of the performance: 60 minutes

The performance is a free adaption of The Frenzy of Orlando, masterpiece of Ludovico Ariosto, adapted to a musical pantomime in 21 musical scenes.

This project has been realized together with the young boys and girls of the Bricabrac Company and has been developed in more than one year of collective commitment. It is a remarkable work of dance-theatre in which also acting and singing play an important role. It makes use of an accurate philological research on music (authentic medieval and renaissance tracks in the ancient Catalan, Occitan and Magyar language), as well as of the contribution of the musician Maestro Tiziano Popoli, author of the original composition of the tracks for the episodes with Astolfo, for his flight on the Moon and for the madness of Orlando. The screenplay follows the interpretative suggestions of the text by Italo Calvino and adapts them to the scene and to its scenographic idea. As regards the décor, the scenographic elements and the costumes it carries out a particular stylistic and figurative research taking inspiration from Jean Tinguely and Fausto Melotti (in accordance with the “metallic” atmosphere of the poem by Ariosto) and the sculptured costumes by Roberto Capucci.

This performance of The Frenzy of Orlando wants therefore to stand as a model and an example of the type and method of work carried out by Bricabrac for and with young people in the field of musical theatre.

The work of textual modification privileges just a few episodes of the poem:

in a fictitious Paris Charlemagne, Emperor of the Franks, entrenched himself with his paladins to protect the Christian Empire from the Arab siege. A continuous stream of duels and battles, spells and betrayals, interwoven with the equally fierce and bellicose love affairs of Orlando, Rinaldo, Angelica, Bradamante, Ruggero…

The main aim has been to represent the dynamics of opposition among the characters, events and situations that create a continuous contraposition of voices and never-ending fantastic narrative plots.

As Calvino says: “It is a poem that does not start nor end”, so much it is complex, fantastic, surreal, full of events and passions, extremely good and evil characters and different human natures.

Flying over the pages of the masterpiece from Ariosto, like an hippogriff over fantastic lands, Bricabrac chose to “sing” the verses of the poem through a kind of collection of danced, acted and sung scenes, which arrive to the audience as if the audience was browsing the pages of a book and recreates on stage the “metallic raging” of the text and the hard clashing of weapons and swords.

Realized by BRICABRAC, thanks to the MUNICIPALITY AND PROVINCE OF BOLZANO

MUSIC:
original Occitan, Catalan and Magyar music: Els Berros de la Cort, Tempradura, Kress.
Tracks by: H. Le Bars, Barbara R. Aubry, T. Popoli

SCENE:
Scenes by Mariapia Doliana inspired by the plastic suggestions by J. Tinguely and F. Melotti.

COSTUMES:
Costumes by Armida Ostet inspired to the sculptured clothes by R. Capucci.

COREOGRAPHY:
contemporary choreography with an adaptation of the dances used at Court and at Medieval Feasts

LANGUAGE:
free adaption of Ariosto’s verses and parts taken from the comment by I. Calvino.

PICTURES:
Saverio Chindamo