Casa Ricordi is glad to announce the new collaboration with Lucia Ronchetti.
The upcoming projects for 2021/2022 that will be published by Ricordi include the new opera Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer for Deutsche Oper am Rhein - Theatergemeinschaft Düsseldorf-Duisburg, together with the choral work Les paroles gelées commissioned by Nouvelle Philharmonie Paris. Further commissions for 2023 include a new opera for Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele - Luzern Oper and another new choral opera for ACHT BRÜCKEN | Musik für Köln.
About Lucia Ronchetti
Born in Rome in 1963, Lucia Ronchetti studied Composition and Computer Music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Philosophy at the University of Rome. In Paris, she took composition seminars with Gérard Grisey, participated in the annual computer music courses at IRCAM (1997) and obtained her PhD in musicology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Sorbonne, under the direction of François Lesure (1999). In 2005 she was Visiting Scholar (Fulbright fellow) at the Columbia University Music Department in New York, at the invitation of Tristan Murail. Other important working experiences include those with Sylvano Bussotti (Scuola di musica di Fiesole, 1981-1984), Salvatore Sciarrino (Corsi internazionali di Città di Castello, 1989-1991), Hans Werner Henze (Marino, 1993-1996).
In 2021 the Oper Frankfurt, presents the new opera Inferno, conducted by Tito Ceccherini and produce the Inferno Opera-Film. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin has produced the chamber opera Pinocchios Abenteuer presenting the work in streaming in January 2021 and will program the opera again in the season 2021-2022. A new opera project will be create at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein of Düsseldorf. In 2020, the Neue Vocalsolisten performed Never bet the devil your head at the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik 2020. The Ensemble Vocale Sequenza 9.3, conducted by Catherine Simonpietri, has premiered Sangu di rosa, Commande de l’Etat of the French Ministry of Culture 2019, in the context of the Defilé Dior. The Ensemble Modern has presented a portrait of Lucia Ronchetti in the Happy New Ears concert series. In 2021 Lucia Ronchetti will be teacher of composition at the Ferienkurse of Darmstadt and visiting professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt.
From 2021 till 2024 she has been appointed artistic director of the Biennale Musica in Venezia.
Upcoming projects
OPERAS
Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer
Opera in 12 scenes for soli, vocal ensemble, choir and orchestra (2020)
Libretto by Friederike Karig after Erich Kästner
Commissioned by Deutsche Oper am Rhein - Theatergemeinschaft Düsseldorf-Duisburg GmbH
WP: Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf-Duisburg, Season 2021/2022
Extracts from the composer's notes
The students of the Johann-Sigismund Gymnasium are preparing a drama called The Flying Classroom written by one of them, Johnny. The theatre piece project is a moment of dream and suspension of the real life of the boys. As theater in the theater, it is the Mise en abyme and the more refined mirror of the special life’s experience of the five boys. The music, through elaborations from popular and old musical fragments, shows the need of the students to escape reality, their search of ideals, their dream to fly in other times, together with their futuristic imagination of a sci-fi new world.
Der Doppelgänger. A Petersburg Poem
Opera for soli, male vocal ensemble and orchestra (2021)
Libretto by Katja petrowskaja after “The Double”by Dostoyevsky
Commissioned by Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele/Luzern Oper
WP: Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, 2023
Extracts from the composer's notes
The St.Petersburg’s acoustic landscape is constantly present in the novel, both as realistic description and as the nightmare of Golyadkin; the sound of the water, “the troubled water” of the canal, the black rain, the invasive clock towers... The novel is a sound-map of the city, a sound-reportage of the wandering of Golyadkin. The sound’s map of the city is also the mirror of the intimate sound-universe of the protagonist, a gigantic tinnitus tormenting him.
CHORAL OPERAS
Les paroles gelées
Choral opera for male voices vocal ensemble, treble voices choir, amateur choirs (also playing organ pipes) and grand organ (2020)
Text after François Rabelais, Des faicts et dicts héroïques du noble Pantagruel (Livre IV), 1548
Commissioned by Nouvelle Philharmonie Paris
WP: Nouvelle Philharmonie Paris, 2022
Extracts from the composer's notes
Les paroles gelées is a project of sound’s dramaturgy conceived for the Grande Salle of the Nouvelle Philharmonie in Paris. The Grand Orgue Rieger will be the center and the fulcrum of the project and his sounds will be developed, expanded and spatialized by the voices distributed in the architectural space, singing and playing organ pipes. The musical work will attempt to give life to this futuristic dream ideated by Rabelais.
Leopardi. Chronicles of loneliness
Choral opera after Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone di pensieri (1817-1832)
Libretto by Lucia Ronchetti and Konrad Kuhn after Leopardi’s Zibaldone di pensieri
Commissioned by ACHT BRÜCKEN | Musik für Köln
WP: Kölner Philharmonie, Festival ACHT BRÜCKEN Musik für Köln, 2023
Extracts from the composer's notes
The work is to be considered as a dramaturgical studio on the solitude and social isolation of the young people, starting from the reflections and testimonies written by Giacomo Leopardi in his notebooks known as Zibaldone di pensieri. The singers as vocal ensemble and choral ensemble, realize a wide sound-landscape in continuous mutation, animated by short events representing the inner activity of reflection and meditation: the social withdrawal and silence chosen by many young people. They express their feeling through Leopardi’s text, with his epic and elegiac temperamento.
photo: © Vanessa Francia