Olga Neuwirth Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie

Olga Neuwirth’s Encantadas draws its inspiration from the “enchanted” Galapagos Islands, as described by Herman Melville. In the middle of the Pacific, a meditation on animals, adventure at sea, the discovery of the archipelago, and the history of its inhabitants, sometimes cruel, with historic events cut off from the mainland.

The Encantadas, ten philosophical “sketches” collected in The Piazza Tales, is both a social manifesto and a speechless writer’s look at a volcanic world. Melville's journey also took Neuwirth to Venice. Tucked in between St. Mark's Basilica and the Arsenal, the San Lorenzo church was the musical epicenter of the Renaissance. It is attached to the monastery where Marco Polo was buried. This is where Luigi Nono wrote Prometeo in 1984. The dilapidated church has been closed to visitors for years. Olga Neuwirth managed to see it anyway, marveling at its space, its echoes, its noises, its murmurs, its crackling sounds, howling, and singing, “like a boat on the sea.” With the help of Ircam's technological resources, Le Encantadas is a splendid recreation of the concert space, preserving San Lorenzo’s unique acoustic. An archipelago, “an ‘arch of dreams’ traveling through space and time, between islands, on a rough sea.”