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Orality, Invisibility, and Laughter: Traces of Milan in Bruno Maderna and Virginio Puecher's Hyperion (1964)

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/oq/kbu015

1476-2870

D. Casadei,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

Unexpected VoicesUnexpected sounds from behind a curtain, heard amid the hushed semidarkness of a theater auditorium: this is what audiences experienced at the opening moments of the premiere of Hyperion, a one-act opera created by Bruno Maderna and Milanese scenographer and stage director Virginio Puecher, which was first performed at the Venice Biennale on September 6, 1964. 1 First comes the clamor of male voices yelling at each other in Venetian dialect.Only then does the curtain part, in a slow, exaggeratedly haphazard way.The stage comes into view, but there is no one there, only an empty set.The backdrop is slightly crooked, hanging from the ceiling in midair without touching the stage floor.Only the obviously artificial rays of sunlight hitting the backdrop (it is 9 p.m., long after sunset) offer any clue that the offstage voices are part of the show. 2 The voices grow louder and closer until a group of machinists ( played, unbeknownst to the audience, by actors) arrives onstage; then comes the tearing screech of an offstage mechanical saw.One of the men walks to the front of the stage.The audience begins to clap tentatively, then stops.Stage notes tell us that the man "behaves as though he were alone: he whistles, taps, approaches the proscenium, recites in Venetian dialect a few classic excerpts, tries out the reverb of the room.Maybe he utters a few swear words: shit, bollocks.If anyone answers from the audience, he replies 'the phantoms of the opera.'" 3 This technician eventually returns backstage, as the shouting and noises from the workers begin to die down.A musician in tails walks pompously onstage, accompanied by an assistant carrying four flute cases and a table, and another machinist with a large music stand and some sheets of music.The musician is none other than flutist Severino Gazzelloni, a rising television personality in 1960s Italy and probably recognizable to some of the audience; others would have known him as a distinguished classical performer, one of Maderna's closest collaborators.Gazzelloni wanders around the stage, obviously puzzled as his helpers go about