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The magic plant of the music
Alraune is an ensemble created by Mario Sollazzo and Stefano Zanobini with the aim of bringing together the eclectic characteristics of the two founders and its members. The guiding principles are a great opening of the repertoire, the absolute attention to historical informed executive practices and the study of sources, long-term projects and multidisciplinary.
Alraune’s activity follows two main strands: the performance on original instruments, which led to projects such asTuscania/i, Strues with Anna Fusek, Le Fate | 1736, Pergolesi | San Guglielmo, Il Combattimento; and the long-term project Musica & Regime that is born from the humanistic idea of Alraune and examines the links between musicians and dictatorial regimes through the rediscovery, the recording and the performance in concert of composers persecuted and denied.
Positive review on: BR-Klassik, Das Orchester, Diapason, RadioTre RAI, Radio France, Opernwelt, Opernfreund, GB Opera, Adagio Assai, Alte Musik Forum, La Repubblica, MDR, Musikansich.de, Fono Forum. Alraune has been awarded with the Cultural Prize of the Italian Republic President.
Alraune collaborated with: Riccardo Minasi, Anna Fusek, Marina Comparato, Anton Martynov.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com
The unknown masterpiece by Pergolesi | World Premiere
Li prodigi della divina grazia nella conversione e morte di San Guglielmo duca d'Aquitania is a sacred drama for music in three acts that Pergolesi composed in 1731 on a text by Ignazio Maria Mancini as final proof of his studies at the Conservatory of the Poor of Jesus Christ.
«The first thing he wrote, while he was still a student at the Conservatorio, was a sacred drama entitled San Guglielmo d'Aquitania, to a poem by Doctor Ignazio Mancini, with several intermezzo scenes in comic style, during the summer of 1731 and first performed at the Cloister of St Aniello of the reverend Canons Regular of the Most Holy Saviour. An honest piece of entertainment which at the time was performed during the summer holidays before scholars in public studies organized by the aforementioned reverend Oratorian Fathers, in the footsteps of their founder Saint. So great was the applause received by the young maestro whom the Fathers had proposed, and so great the commotion created in Naples by Pergolesi’s musical talent and taste, that the three leading houses, Colonna of the Princes of Stigliano, Caraccioli of the Princes of Avellino and Carafa of the Dukes of Maddaloni, vied with together to grant him their friendship and protection.» Giuseppe Sigismondo 1802
San Guglielmo is a sacred drama with typical Neapolitan characteristics full of an extreme religiosity but lightened by the presence of a funny character in dialect that accompanies the whole work. This mixture, immediately makes you think of the Neapolitan theater tradition linked to the sacred periods and fits perfectly. A tradition that from the sacred medieval representations passes through the eighteenth-century theater and whose vestiges are still represented today by that infinitely changing Christmas theater rite of the Neapolitan "Cantata dei Pastori". The purely popular and funny elements coexist with the dramatic spiritual, political and human story of the protagonist creating two real parallel plots, that of San Guglielmo and his neapolitan Sancho Panza: Cuosemo. Both initially fierce soldiers, finish the work dead the Saint and in talari clothes (willingly or not) Cuosemo.
The oustanding cast: Monica Piccinini in the title role, Mauro Borgioni as Demonio, Caterina di Tonno, Carla Babelegoto and Federica Carnevale in the other roles and Mario Sollazzo in the double role of concertatore and singer in the role of Neapolitan "buffo" Cuosemo. Alraune recorded the San Guglielmo in its first full recording on original instruments, the triple cd is produced by Novantiqua.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/san-guglielmo
Listen, look, loose yourself!
Alraune collaborates with one of the most original emerging figures of ancient music, the multi-instrumentalist Anna Fusek. From the meeting of Alraune and Anna Fusek was born the concert-installation STRUES, extremely informal and experimental.
STRUES in latin means a kind of sacral bread otherwise it means also stratification and it's the future form of the verb "to build". This latin word inspired Alraune and Anna Fusek creating the videos and the music programm of Strues. STRUES is an installation/concert playable anywhere, from a concert hall to an informal venue. A lot of different videos are projekted at the same time everywhere: on the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the public itself at the same time Alraune and Anna Fusek play without interruption the music programm based on the idea of stratification, poliphony and the sacrality of the reptition and of the rite. The concert will be a complex experience where the musical structures are connected with the video material in an immersive experience.
Music by: Carlo Gesualdo, Marin Marais, Johann Sebastian Bach, Christopher Tye, Philipp Glass, Georg Ivanovich Gurdjeff, Henry Purcell.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/alraune+annafusek
No fear. Follow me!
SOLO is a concert programm with solo Concertos by Vivaldi, Bach, Durante and Telemann. Anna Fusek and the musicians of Alraune play different instruments changing the roles from soloist to accompanist and concertmaster at the same time. SOLO presents solo concertos for all the instruments playing: recorder, viola d'amore, viola, violin, harpsichord, lute, cello and was developed by Anna Fusek and Alraune to present the extreme contrast between solo and tutti in a way of acrobatic virtuoso playing.
SOLO includes, in addition to Vivaldi’s masterpieces such as the Concerto for flute strings and b.c. RV443, the Concerto for cello, strings and b.c. RV 405, the Concerto for recorder, strings and b.c. “La notte” RV 439 and other solo concertos by J.S. Bach, Telemann e Durante.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/alraune+annafusek
Listening always starts from silence
"A real rethinking of the music and the drama", so Colin Clarke on Seen and Heard International about the interpretation of the Purcell's masterpiece by Mario Sollazzo and Alraune.
The production of the Opera Saison 2020/21 of the Teatro Comunale Luciano Pavarotti di Modena conducted by Mario Sollazzo, under the direction of Stefano Monti, has been a real new apporach to the opera by Purcell, moved by the strong aim of Alraune to leave a personal imprinting to the well known as well as the unknown repertoire.
This interpretation follows some principles: a important use of the percussions, a big rhytmical energy and a continuous tension during the whole opera.
Alberto Dilenge on Connessiallopera.it writes: "From the notes of the overture one can already perceive the strong pathos and the stylistic attention present in the interpretation proposed by Mario Sollazzo who, from the harpsichord, conducts the musicians of the Ensemble Alraune. The sound is neat, brilliant, rich in contrasts and nuances that guarantee the elegance and variety of narration needed for the score of Purcell".
The whole opera has been broadcasted by Opera Streaming and it's still available online.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/alraune+dido&aeneas
Terezìn. North of Prague, 1941.
A sad name for the history of the Jews and not only, a tragic place for the history of all humanity.
A citadel turned into a ghetto/ concentration camp by the ruthless Nazi machine. Also sadly known as the concentration camp of children. 15,000 children were transported here, torn from homes and families. They were locked up waiting to be transported to extermination camps. Only 100 survived. Of the 15,000 children, there are 66 poems written by their fists, secretly. Poems that excruciatingly represent the voice of those martyrs.
Alraune produced 4 Cds of the "Musica & Regime" Serie with music for different ensembles, from Solo up to Septet by: Schul, Zemlinsky, Bartok, Ullmann, Schulhoff, Tyberg, Raphael, Hindemith, Lutoslawsky... A lot of them as first world recording.
The painter Michele Riccomini created a collection of paintig inspired by the poems of Terezìn and his works are a part of the “Musica & Regime” projekt.
The exhibition “Voci dal ghetto” is a multidisciplinar exhibition including the concerts of music written by composers imprisoned in Terezin. “Voci dal ghetto” is awarded with the Culture Prize of the President of the Italian Republic
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/musica-regime
→ vocidalghetto.com
→ The Musica & Regime Recording Serie produced by NovAntiqua Records
The big lightness
"Furious is also the staging of Anne Juds. A feast for the eyes. A phantasmagoria of dragon flights, gorgonian hair, fake breasts and rampant jungle atmosphere. It’s a heartfelt staging, with a real sense of tradition and sensitivity to the spirit of our times," so Udo Badelt in Opernwelt magazine, Paolo V. Montanari comments on Gbopera "Mario Sollazzo and Stefano Zanobini have decided to represent the work entirely, without any cut, with a duration of more than three hours, but the audience did not feel any moment of boredom (or at least did not give it to see, given the heat of the applause) thanks to the instrumental verve of the Ensemble Alraune that has never left without character even the simplest accompaniment and a young Italian cast (or perfectly Italian speaking) that we do not hesitate to consider ideal".
It is the opera "Le Fate" represented in Dresden in 1736 and composed by Giovanni Alberto Ristori for the court of Dresden. The staging of Alraune was created for the Historical Ekhof Theatre of Gotha in Germany and saw 10 sold out shows in addition to the production of the film "Le Fate 1736" directed by Anton Giulio Onofri broadcasted by Sky Classica HD and produced on DVD by Novantiqua Records.
It is a work based on the well-known plot of the episode of Ruggiero and Alcina pervaded by an iressistibile lightness and a unique musical inventiveness.
The staging of Alraune, is designed for both a traditional theater and for unconventional spaces.
→ www.ensemblealraune.com/alraune+lefate
A tribute to Tuscany, the first land freed from the death penalty
On 30 November 1786 the Grand Duke of Tuscany Peter Leopold promulgated the reform of the penal laws with which the death penalty in a state was abolished for the first time in history.
Just in those years Tuscan musicians, such as Cambini, Boccherini and Cherubini, offered a considerable contribution to developing chamber genres and musical structures that were then imposed in the classical and romantic period.
Alraune celebrates this important historical moment with the re-presentation of pages - often little known - of Tuscan composers and composers with whom they came into contact, such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.
→ The Tuscania Recording Serie produced by NovAntiqua Records
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