Text: Raffaele Guadagnin Direction: Mirko Corradini Music: Michele Callà
Year: 2021
A mélodie dramatique for two speaking voices and ensemble, based on an original theatrical text by poet Raffaele Guadagnin. The piece unfolds as an absurdist trial — a grotesque courtroom where the accused stands charged with attempting to transcend his condition through experience, yet his defence lawyer and the court itself conspire to reduce every lived moment to bureaucratic categorization.
The text weaves literary allusions, geographic references, and philosophical provocations through a dense, erudite language that borders on the cryptic. The accused speaks of travels both real and metaphorical — the Danube, London, Paris, the Sahara, Hunedoara castle, San Francisco — but the court demands proof, documentation, coherence. The central metaphor is the barrel organ (l'orgue de barberie), borrowed from Jacques Prévert: a modest, even scorned instrument that the accused insists on playing, despite the court's pressure to abandon it for more respectable tools.
My work
I composed the music as a sonic architecture that mirrors the text's erudition and fragmentation. Rather than illustrating the narrative, the music operates through transformed quotation and atmospheric layering.
The score integrates material from:
- Two French chansons (referencing the text's invocation of Prévert)
- The opening of Alban Berg's Piano Sonata in B minor
- Original passages that respond to the shifts in rhythm and tone of Guadagnin's language
The ensemble includes flute, clarinet, two horns, harp, piano, accordion, percussion (wood block, triangle, snare drums, bass drum, toms, cymbals, finger cymbal), glockenspiel, vibraphone, violin, and double bass. The accordion — present but deliberately not used as a barrel organ cliché — hovers as a latent presence, echoing the accused's refusal to perform the expected role.
The two speaking voices inhabit the roles of the accused and his attorney, while the conductor and instrumentalists take on the parts of judge and magistrate, blurring the boundary between musical and theatrical action.
Technical details
Year - 2021
Genre - Mélodie dramatique (music theatre)
TextRaffaele Guadagnin (original)
Direction - Mirko Corradini
Performers - 2 speaking voices, ensemble
Ensemble - Flute, Clarinet in Bb, 2 Horns, Harp, Piano, Accordion, Percussion, Glockenspiel, Vibraphone, Violin, Double Bass
Duration15'
Premiere - Professional audio/video recording (Conservatorio F.A. Bonporti, Trento)