Al gran sole carico d'amore

"Al gran sole carico d'amore" ("In the Bright Sunshine Heavy with Love") is an opera with music by Luigi Nono, based mainly on plays by Bertolt Brecht, but also incorporating texts of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Nono himself and Yury Lyubimov wrote the libretto. It premiered at the Teatro alla Scala on April 4, 1975. Lyubimov directed the original production. The UK premiere was at the 32nd Edinburgh Festival in 1978. [McAllister, Rita, "Festivals: Edinburgh" (November 1978). "The Musical Times", 119 (1629): pp. 980-983.] In addition to vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra, the work incorporates taped sounds. This work is a product of Nono's strong political activism through the mid-1970s. [Gorodecki, Michael, "Strands in 20th-Century Italian Music: 1. Luigi Nono: A History of Belief" (January 1992). "The Musical Times", 133 (1787): pp. 10-14, 16-17.]

Roles

*Tania (soprano)
*Thiers (tenor)
*Favre (bass)
*Louise Michel (4 sopranos),
*L’ufficiale, "the offcial" (tenor),
*Il soldato, "the soldier" (tenor)
*Bismarck (bass)
*La madre, "the mother" (alto)
*Deola (4 sopranos)
*Pavel (baritone
*Il direttore di una fabbrica russa del 1905, "the manager of a Russian factory in 1905" (tenor)
*Il delatore, "the police informer" (tenor)
*Haydée (soprano)
*Una madre e donne vietnamite, "a mother and Vietnamese women" (soprano)
*Gramsci (baritone)
*Dimitrov (2 basses)
*Castro (bass)
*"Male and female communards, guerillas, comrades, the people of Paris, modern workers, mothers, Sicilian immigrants, Cuban women, prisoners"

ynopsis

The story is without conventional linear narrative, and comments in its two parts on the 1871 Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution. The principal characters are women from those periods, who perish in an attempt to stop the violence of their times.

Recording

* Teldec 8573-81059-2: Claudia Barainsky, Maraile Lichdi, Melinda Liebermann, Stella Kleindienst, Lani Poulson, Roderic Keating, Markus Marquardt, Peter Kajlinger, Urs Winter, Helmut Holzapfel, Mark Munkittrick, Carsten Wittmoser; Chorus and Orchestra of the Staatsoper Stuttgart; Lothar Zagrosek, conductor.

References

*GroveOnline|Al gran sole carico d'amore|David Osmond-Smith|09 August|2007
* [http://delteatro.it/dizionario_dell_opera/a/al_gran_sole_carico_damore.php Al gran sole carico d’amore] , in Piero Gelli (editor) "Dizionario dell'opera",Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2008. ISBN 886073184 (online version).

External links

* [http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=13973 Michael Oliver, "International Record Review" review of Teldec issue] (through andante.com, overall andante site now defunct)