Intolleranza 1960: Luigi Nono

I have done a few posts on Luigi Nono (1924 - 1990) here on the blog, but I was far from doing a complete survey of his life and works. Intolleranza 1960 is the first of his three stage works and the most overtly political. The message is a fairly simple one: fascism is bad, oppression is bad, torture is bad and so on. What saves the work and makes it not seem so tied to the political events of the day such as the colonial war in Algeria (one of the characters is Algerian) is the surprisingly lyrical musical elements and poetical elements from Paul Eluard and Bertholt Brecht in the libretto.

The stage is full of characters: five solo singers, one of whom has to do a surprising amount of acrobatic dancing as well as a challenging vocal part, sixty chorus members who do a great deal of physical movement as well, and twenty or so dancers who are in constant frenetic motion throughout. Apart from the eighty or so orchestra players in the pit, fifteen percussionists are divided between a balcony at the back of the stage on the left and another small balcony in front of the stage on the right.

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As you can see, there were no stage sets, instead, the whole of the large Felsenreitschule stage is occupied by the large cast of singers, chorus and dancers. The director/choreographer Jan Lauwers was instrumental in the creation of this production which had more dance than actual singing. He also contributed an additional character, the Blind Poet.

Nono was, of course, a man of the left, in his early years a committed communist. But he was also, first and foremost, an artist and this is undoubtedly why the performance was successful. As well as being a condemnation of the persistent violence done to the innocent every day--today's examples come from Afghanistan--it is a celebration of life and the beauty of nature, something that keeps peeking through.

I expected the evening to be interesting, but it was surprisingly more enjoyable than I anticipated. The audience reacted with long, long applause.