Lethe
Opera Buffa Acusmatica
2018

for field recordings and music of Luciano Cilio


The piece is a soundtrack of a performance for loduspeakers, total darkness and projected text.

* It is stronly recommended to listen to the album with no pauses between the tracks. If you purchase the album, please send me a nudge and I will happily deliver a one-piece edit.

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Lethe /ˈliːθiː/ (Greek: Λήθη, Lḗthē; Ancient Greek: [lɛɛ:tʰɛː]), in Classical Greek – oblivion, forgetfulness, concealment. Lethe, so the Greek mythology says, is an underground river, one of the five underground rivers of Hades. Virgil believes that the dead need to drink from it in order to have their memories erased and be able to get reincarnated. Dante agrees – on the way around the Mountain of Purgatory, one needs to be wiped out of sins by the waters of Lethe. Anchises claims that Lethe is accessible in a cave in Cumae, just off of Napoli, where a prophetess Sibyl resides. Now it is also drinkable in every corner shop in town, from the bottle proudly wearing the logo you might also know from the local footballer's t-shirts.

"Lethe" is an acousmatic opera buffa made of field recordings taken exclusively in Napoli and inlaid with the music of Luciano Cilio, short-lived local composer.

"Lethe" is an opera buffa simply because it comes from the streets of Napoli, the place where the genre was born in early 18th century. Back then it favored local dialects over official language, mundane heroes and crimes over gods and myths, real voices over operatic singing. Even today, it is enough to go out on the street for a coffee to understand why this kind of music was born there. And also why it is reborn there again and again, every day, on every corner, with every grain of voice of a local quarrel which is at the same time one more musical gesture in a neverending landscape of characters, as Robert Ashley famously defined opera.

"Lethe" is acousmatic not only because it is made of recordings but also because it gains conceptual and structural framework from the topography of purgatory. For locals, there is an acousmatic element at the heart of it. Their vision of purgatory says that anonymous, lost souls are doomed to stay there forever. They are also prone to become traders with the living, communicating with them from behind the veil – if their corpses are well taken care of, they repay from the outer world. Perhaps this commerce explains why so many of the actual local calls blasted off into the air remain there, unanswered. Or maybe they are answered but inaudibly. Or maybe audibly but incomprehensibly. Or comprehensibly but not phonically.


Synopsis

Lethe
Opera buffa acusmatica
for two soloists, one mute

Overture
in which a suggestion is made that the entire opera is about seemingly unanswered calls, jerky dialogues, names, dogs or passages through the gravest waters.

Act I
in which first dialogue of the main characters occurs. She walks out on the balcony, faces the gates of the underground war shelter and cannot stop her voice. She reminds him of his deadly sin of asking the mother to suck his dick – a sin difficult to purge, making him loose his name and die abandoned. His answer follows.

Act II
in which his purgation continues, marked by more calls reminding him of more sins. He tries to recognize calls meant for him but – being without a name – he gets overwhelmed by voices, which becomes his sharpest pain.

Act III
in which a strange prayer takes place, deep in the cave where nameless, abandoned people are buried. It is not clear who performs the prayer. What is known is that she adopted his skull, in accordance with an old tradition – she dreamt it and then she stole it. As she sits cleaning it carefully, she reasses his name, letting him die again.

Coda
in which suggestion is made that there are gravest waters that can even out jerky dialogues.