Ariadne alive

Ovid in Medieval and Renaissance Italy

In this new project by the ensemble Dialogos, past and present meet in an unexpected labyrinth: a singer is carried by her singing into an ecstatic space, out of time. There, she encounters her own voice, reciting the verses of Italian medieval poets and translators of Ovid, and discovers that the voice, like the soul, travels from body to body through time.

She was Ariadne, daughter of the Cretan king Minos, and still is today, haunted by the memory of her encounter with the Athenian hero Theseus, between the sea and the Cretan olive groves. They fell in love, she gave him the thread to guide him through the labyrinth and help him defeat the Minotaur. On their return to Athens, they stop off on the Naxos island. But the morning after their night of love, Ariadne wakes up to find Theseus gone. Where had he gone? Why has he abandoned her?

The sources

Faithful to its own alchemical thread of Ariadne in bringing to life forgotten medieval sonorities, Dialogos reconstructs a musical language contemporary to Italian translations of Ovid's Heroids and Metamorphoses by Tuscan scholars such as Filippo Ceffi and Arrigo Simintendi in the 14th century. Later generations of poets, Domenico da Monticello in the 14th century, Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara and Lodovico Dolce in the 16th century, adapted these prose translations into poetry, using the popular ottava rima, a form of sung improvised poetry which has been preserved by traditional Italian poets to the present day.

The music

Music was ubiquitous in the salons and accademie of the early humanists. Madrigals adapted for voice and accompaniment were performed, and improvised poetry was sung. The cantori al liuto, such as Ippolito Tromboncino, mentioned by Lodovico Dolce himself, sang accompanied by the lute or another instrument. Dolce's tragedy Troiane was adorned with musical interludes, unfortunately not preserved, composed by his contemporary Claudio Merulo, organist at San Marco. Cornelio Frangipane, another Venetian author of the same period, mentions Merulo's music in his work, present not only in the interludes and choirs concluding the acts, but also supporting the declamation of various roles. Unfortunately, this music has now been lost. However, editions of 16th-century poems set to music, such as the strambotti, giustiniane and gregesche, bear witness to the links between the learned tradition of vocal polyphony and its adaptations by poet-singers in humanist salons and in theatrical plays.

Through the exploration of musical sources between the Trecento and the early Renaissance, and the improvisational techniques of ottava rima singers, Katarina Livljanić and Dialogos experiment with vocal and instrumental colours, presenting a musical creation that evokes the treasures of the studioli of Florentine humanists curious about Antiquity, while bringing to today's audience the most authentic approach of a medievalist and humanist musician - the art of improvisation.

The staging

The staging is based on the corporeal presence of the two lovers and the dualism emanating from the sung texts: speech/silence, shadow/light, movement/immobility, tension/release... These dualities lead to a third reality - the eternal reality of myth. In dialogue with the landscapes and video projections, the lighting is based on a constantly renewed chiaroscuro.

In this staged musical performance, the Ovidian text of the Heroides, love letters from mythological heroines to their lovers, transcends antiquity to become a story of our souls, inviting us to journey into the intimate labyrinths of our own lives.

Ariadne alive, embodied by the charisma of Pino De Vittorio and Katarina Livljanić, staged with finesse and poetry by Olivier Lexa, is like a collection of ancient treasures freed from their vaults and plunged into real life. Our Ariadne is not an antiquarian object, just as myths are not relics of the past. They speak, forever, of the present. They are proof that life itself is not enough, that we are truly alive for only a few hours of our lives.

Katarina Livljanic & Olivier Lexa