A multimedia performance in which video art and opera dialogue with each other reflecting on the theme of climate, social, and individual change: the video-sound dramaturgy by Daniele Spanò and Angelo Elle, combined with the singing of mezzo-soprano Arianna Lanci, give life to an immersive multisensory organism in which voice, light, video, body, and sound exchange their functionality and skills.
In Forma Sonata, Arianna Lanci shares the space with a changeable and dynamic object, which evokes an altarpiece, a totem, or an advertising video wall: the multimedia installation by the visual artist Daniele Spanò is created starting from audiovisual recordings made in Venice during the exceptional high tide of 2019 which led to an extraordinary and prolonged rise of water in the lagoon.
In addition to the performance of two repertoire pieces, Piangono al pianger mio and Mille regretz, the opera singer explores new vocal possibilities through the use of samplers, loop machines, and microphones, in dialogue with the electronic compositions of the musician and sound designer Angelo Elle.
The focal image of this work is a video sequence in which a continuous flow of tourists gathers to take endless photographs of Piazza San Marco under water after the high tide: a bulimic act of capturing the image of destruction fuelled by the seduction of the supernatural and the extraordinary. The phenomenon we are facing is something Other than us and therefore it does not concern us, we cannot be its cause, even if only in part. The looks and the euphoria on the faces, the need to capture that moment, and the city of Venice itself therefore become the central point of reflection on the theme of climate change but, above all, on the growth of an awareness of the emergency of a paradigm shift in the relationship that exists between human beings and nature.
Starting from this central point, the performance is structured backwards in a study on the representation of the climate, cloudiness and sky in Venetian painting between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the original archive, created through photographic shots of the backgrounds of the paintings of the collection housed in the Galleria Dell'Accademia in Venice, reveals a renewed relationship between man and nature following the Copernican revolution.