Text taken from the hall booklet from Icarus vs Muzak performance at the Elfo Puccini theatre, Milan. Narrator: Elio de Capitani, 22 September 2022.

Silvia Colasanti revisits the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur in a 35′-long composition, preceded by a public meeting with the composer.

The evening’s programme introduces us to the myth through Britten’s delicate suggestions, interspersed with verses from six of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, before moving on to Silvia Colasanti. Her work reinterprets the myths according to a contemporary language and sensibility, in the form of a melologue, to address the story of the Minotaur.
In Ariadne and the Minotaur – libretto by Giorgio Ferrara and René De Ceccatty – the usual dialectic between the recited word and music is interwoven with song, in a further multiplication of expressive possibilities.
The myth of a terrifying monster is transformed into a ‘human’ drama: the strength of the Minotaur (Elio De Capitani) is not accompanied by thought and the ability to distinguish good from evil, but by a confused and innocent feeling, which makes the monster ‘the different one’, not an enemy, but a victim, a naive man condemned to live in the body of a monstrous being.
Opposed to him is man as the real executioner, capable of deception and false friendship, represented by Ariadne (the soprano Giulia Bolcato) half-sister of the Minotaur because she is the daughter of the same mother Pasiphae.

Watch the trailer: