On 27 March 2026, as part of an international symposium dedicated to the relationship between work and technological innovation, debuted in the first absolute at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò Le Voci dello Stretto, work in an act composed by Roberto Scarcella Perino on libretto by Eugenio Refini. The event is part of the project “Music Theater and New Technologies”, a research program that investigates how digital instruments and new production methods can intervene in musical writing and scenic construction, at a time when contemporary musical theatre tends to work on agile formats and integrated technological devices.
The production, curated by Geneva Petrucci, includes a reduced organic, with a trio composed of violin (Anthony Bracewell), cello (Luke Krafka) and piano (Matthieu Cognet), and a cast composed by Suchan Kim in the role of Pellegrino, Emma Marhefka and Anna Maria Vacca in a double vocal function between mythological figures and symbolic characters, and Bernard Holcom. A central part is also entrusted to the Children’s Chorus of the Italian School Guglielmo Marconi in New York, directed by Lauren Marie Gismondi.
The narrative structure resumes elements of the tradition linked to the Strait of Messina – Scilla, Cariddi, Fata Morgana, Colapesce – reorganizing them in a story built around an apparently unexplained event: the appearance and disappearance of a bridge between Sicily and Calabria observed by a falcon, Pellegrino. The dramatic device moves between mythological tale and contemporary reference, implicitly recalling the debate, still open, on the construction of the bridge on the Strait. The final solution – an optical illusion generated by Fata Morgana – is linked to a real atmospheric phenomenon, known in the local popular tradition and often associated with suspicious and distorted images visible on the sea.
To share with the first it is necessary to register here.
L’articolo A work on the Strait of Messina at its first absolute, at NYU proviene da IlNewyorkese.