ALAVÒ (2017)

In ALAVÒ, the plot “Sapia la sapiente” is translated into layers of dreams, inspired by the movie “Inception”. While awake, Sapia mourns her late mother. In her dreams, she marries Prince Carluccio, and goes strolling with him. In a dream within that dream, she is locked in a dungeon, where her mind gradually disintegrates. She finds peace deep within her subconscious, where she hears the voice of her dead mother, singing her a lullaby as if by magic. A tender farewell, growing ever softer, fading into silence, an ending of which no artist had a keener appreciation than Claudio Abbado.

Vito Žuraj (trans. Alwyn Tomas Westbrooke)

ALAVÒ: To charm children gently to sleep with a song. A fairytale music in homage to Claudio Abbado, whose mother, an author of children’s books, hailed from Palermo. Fairytales were thus a part of her everyday life. Patrick Hahn, the librettist of ALAVÒ, also found himself transported by Sicily to the fairytale plane. “Catherine, Sly Country Lass”, from the book “Italian Folktales”, by Italo Calvino, and “Sapia”, from the more than three-hundred-year-old fairytale anthology “Pentameron”, by Giambattista Basile, are both variations on the story of a girl who seduces the prince of Palermo with her guile and beauty, and leads him on an extraordinary caper. In ALAVÒ, the plot of “Catherine, Sly Country Lass” is combined with the name of “Sapia”, and story is translated into a world of dreams. While awake, Sapia mourns her late mother. In her dreams, she marries Prince Carluccio, and goes strolling with him. In a dream within that dream, she is locked in a dungeon, where her mind gradually disintegrates. She finds peace deep within her subconscious, where she hears the voice of her dead mother, singing her a lullaby as if by magic. A tender farewell, growing ever softer, fading into silence, an ending of which no artist had a keener appreciation than Claudio Abbado.

Vito Žuraj, trans. Tomas Westbrooke