Genesis of the opera

What is the role of music and art today in comparison with everyday life? Does art have a strong political value, made to arouse the conscience of the consumer? Is it possible to have a dialogue among the three monotheistic religions, in today’s problematic world situation?

These are, synthetically, the propelling forces in M° Amato’s opera, which drove him to write a religious Cantata that would encompass in a “unicum” the three religious faiths, due to his conviction of the strong message of peace present in the three confessions. The religious faith seen as a notion of unity, peace and not as an element of division and disagreement.

 

Models and structure of the opera

The definition of the concept of “originality” is always a particularly complex one. Especially for an author of the XXI century, who was inevitably influenced by every other author that already covered the same path, as well as the one he will cover in the near future.

 

A popular music

A constant of the latest works of M° Amato has been to conjugate the different musical experiences in a unitary structure. Uniting different matrixes, one of a decidedly classical sort, closer to the canons of the late German romanticism, and the other closer to the traditions of popular music and of consumption music, inevitably present in our everyday lives. One might object that this call to popular music already has, in the field of musical history, important figures; just think of Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, as well as Johan Brahms, and therefore it would be overly presumptuous to want to draw these two “colossi” close to each other. However, we do not share this opinion and we think that the lessons of these great icons are needed to find new roads, without forgetting to remain close to the audience and trying to establish a dialogue with it.

 

Models and literary sources

The operas of Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten have significantly influenced the completion of this cantata. Of the two authors, we focused on the analysis of the “Chichester psalms” and of the “War requiem” both in compositional terms, and in ideological terms. One permeated by a profound religious significance, the other touched by ethical-religious reflections, stimulated by the tragedies of the Second World War. The literature in Enzo Bianchi’s “The book of prayers” (Einaudi, Turin, 1997) gave M° Amato a solid starting point for the writing of this opera.

 

Structure

The cantata is structured in six moments, somehow similar to the structure of the mass, but with a different significance. Certain sections present the texts of the three religions united in a harmonic bond. Other sections each have a single prayer, or poem, from one of the three religions. All of this is clearly bound by the logic of the equilibrium. To sum up, there are three sections solely dedicated to the individual texts of the three religions, and the other sections with the religions "in a dialogue" with each other.