Time Machine [score + detached parts].

Time Machine was born in spring 2011 from the collaboration between Loredana D'Anghera, a jazz singer with a classical background, and the pianist-composer Massimiliano Damerini. Loredana D'Anghera's starting idea was to highlight the different peculiarities and difficulties in the intersection of classical vocal approach and light repertoire. Starting from this basic idea, the composer created an innovative musical project, which deals with three different aspects of virtuosity: vocal (the passage through very different eras, styles, musical genres, with use of amplified imposted and unimposed voice), compositional (as an extremely elaborate example of 'false authorship'), and finally librettistic (the 'false authorship' also concerning the texts). All this was made possible by the invention of a (non-chronological) 'pathway' during which the performers seamlessly pass through various 'authorial fakes', in the following order: Monteverdi, Mozart, the Italian Song of the 1960s, Berio, Bach, the Tango à la Piazzolla, Debussy, the American Song, the Aria of a possible 19th century Russian Opera, the Bossa Nova à la Jobim, Mahler. For the realisation of this feat, an opera-style 'librettist' was needed, but with the culture and irony necessary to imitate the various styles in their own languages. Vittorio Caratozzolo, who in life is a teacher of literature, is a true man of letters with a passion for authorial forgery. Among his most significant works is A Trial of Don Giovanni (Guida, Naples, 2009), which mixes together the most famous literary 'Don Giovanni', but above all deconstructs and reconstructs the plot and voices of Mozart's opera in a trial plot. For Time Machine Caratozzolo has elaborated this dramaturgy: the protagonist, offended by the missed appointment with her beloved (the pianist), vents herself irosely with a Monteverdian recitar cantando, on a text by Ariosto, and then as Dorabella in Così fan tutte, in a Mozart aria with a Lorenzo Da Ponte text. Having lost hope, she becomes Mina with a 'blues' song that could be by Lucio Battisti, or Bruno Canfora. Then interest is rekindled thanks to an ironic passage almost "Sequenza per voce femminile" by Luciano Berio, in which quotations from other languages (including Greek) intervene, as in a phonetic game à la Edoardo Sanguineti. Harmonious peace returns, and we are in the midst of Bach's Cantata profana, with a German text of course. Another remarkable shock, and we are in Buenos Aires: the Bachian harpsichord continues its improvisation and becomes a bandoneon. A violent tango à la Piazzolla begins, one imagines Milva singing a text by Horacio Ferrer. The verse is poignant and melancholic. From sunny Argentina, we magically move to Paris. A few refined chords, and we are in Debussy, with a text reminiscent of Verlaine or Rimbaud. Then off to Hollywood, where a sort of Henry Mancini (but it could be Burt Bacharach) plays a Love Song. We jump to St Petersburg, meeting a possible Tchaikovsky (but it could be Borodin, or Rachmaninov) who declaims (in Russian, of course) the eternity of souls in love. Having reached intimacy, the song becomes a whisper: we are in Rio, here comes Jobim with a poetic Bossa Nova, in Portuguese of course. Now love becomes idealised and sublimated with music close to Mahler and lyrics by a possible Nietsche. But all these musical and literary jet lags drive the singer completely mad, who in her delirium mixes all the fragments together in a melting-pot of madness. The pianist tries to keep up with her, but trudges along and always arrives slightly late... Finally, the false Mahler quote brings everything back on track. The finale is constructed as a surprise. In the midst of so many 'false auteurs' we also have 'false endings': the pianist concludes 'Mahler-Nietsche' with a refined coda in pianissimo, but the singer clearly expresses her concern that this way the applause does not go off... The pianist then tries other possible endings: a march (again stopped by the singer), and even an ironic Scottish jig (stopped by the soprano almost immediately). Finally the two find harmony on a sweeping Waltz finale: after Mahler we remain in Vienna, but in the Vienna of Johann Strauss.