FULL PURGATORIO de ROMEO CASTELLUCCI (Scott Gibbons) Avignon 2008
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Purgatorio
- Composer: Gibbons Scott
- Libretto: Romeo Castellucci inspired by Dante's La Divina Commedia Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Châteaublanc, Parc des expositions, Avignon, France, Festival d'Avignon
- Recorded: July 9, 2008
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Irena Radmanovic, Pier Paolo Zimmermann, Sergio Scarlatella, Juri Roverato, Davide Savorani
- Conductor: Scott Gibbons
- Orchestra:
- Choreographer: Cindy Van Acker. Romeo Castellucci
- Stage Director: Romeo Castellucci
- Stage Designer: Romeo Castellucci
- Costume Designer: Romeo Castellucci
- Lighting Designer: Romeo Castellucci
Information about the Recording
- Published by: ARTE
- Date Published: 2008
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The man who goes through purgatory – the “song of the earth” – is a curious being, constantly stopped by the concrete nature of the things and objects that surround him, in a depiction of his own life. This material occupies him, blocks his way, attaches him and often torments him. It bears witness to what exactly purgatory is to Romeo Castellucci: human life in its daily repetition, familiarity with everyday tasks, the trap of routine, the experience of the ordinary body, encounters with the finished world, known nature, the substances of life. He knows that he is condemned to wander there, among reality, represented both without distance, abstractly, and hyper-realistically, “a reality without a shadow” says the director, who has engaged himself in a major work on evolving forms. Punishment, here, is just living, experiencing the world. This Purgatorio is therefore more than a show because it is also the occasion, for the spectator, for an experience that Romeo Castellucci considers very valuable: finding oneself, suddenly, on the other side of stagecraft, behind the performance. As if each individual could attend the projected show of his own life, but a primitive one, sent back to the earliest times, those of origins and birth. This suddenly offered lucidity, like an experience of a return to vision within contemporary nature, a return to sensation in the midst of a modern city, isn’t it even more terrible? It is an existential anguish that springs up from this show, as if sensations and the body were dissolving in matter.