Coming June 22, it’s the world premiere of TOVEL ’s (Matteo Franceschini) OPUS, for amplified string quartet and live electronics, at La Scala Paris, in the frame of ManiFeste festival. Repeat performance: June 23.  

Conceived as an immersive audio-video performance, OPUS features the participation of Franceschini in the guise of his alter ego TOVEL. He’ll be working closely with the other musicians in a show that’s a creative act in itself, as they transform the score into sonic energy. TOVEL is Franceschini’s way of reviving the composer-performer figure in order to experiment with new sounds “from within”, as Franceschini likes to call it.  

The creation of OPUS saw the collaboration of some of the most engaging artistic realities on the contemporary scene: the duo 1024 architecture, builders of the sound-emitting set featuring Italian landscapes, which creates a captivating immersive universe; sound engineer Manuel Poletti of IRCAM; and Quartetto Maurice, which throughout the performance interacts with the set and the live electronics presided over by TOVEL in real time.  

OPUS (2019) - [teaser] from TOVEL (aka Matteo Franceschini) on Vimeo.

Franceschini had this to say about the work:

“In OPUS, each of the acoustic sources – the four string instruments – passes through an on-stage amplifier, and is manipulated by a series of effect pedals directly controlled by the musicians. […] From the very start, we don’t know whether these elaborations are induced by the sounds produced by the musicians’ instruments or by their bodies. Slowly, imperceptibly, the piece evolves and is transformed thanks to the processing of sounds that keep changing in real time, as well as to the light and video projections which are manipulated by the artists from 1024 architecture. […] In its own way, each situation is an all-new performance. And the sum total of each of these performances creates dramaturgical unity.”

TOVEL ’s (Franceschini) OPUS was co-commissioned by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and ProQuartet-Centre européen de musique de chambre.

Photo: Valentina Mari