Subject:
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A Night at the (Lego) Opera
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Thu, 11 May 2000 13:07:32 GMT
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Last Saturday, May 6 2000, I had the great pleasure to be present at the
premiére of the LEGO Opera, on stage at Teatro Nuovo in Verona, Italy.
The opera, that the authors define a "chamber opera", tells the story of the
LEGO factory and most of all of the LEGO idea.
Here an abstract of the press release (my own translation from Italian):
------------------------
The Lego chamber opera makes its debut in Verona
Written by Nicola Campogrande on a libretto by Dario Voltolini, the Lego
chamber opera makes its debut in Verona on Saturday May 6.
[...]
Lego tells the story of the famous Danish factory. But the opera itself is a
large play where the stage becomes animated with constructions, which tells
of a plastic world that from 1932 on grew in parallel to the real world.
Some questions to Nicola Campogrande:
Q: How was the idea born, why Lego?
A: When I was seven we moved to a new house. The metal box where I stored my
Lego got lost, and this has been a (small) shock for me. In the following
years, many times I've been about to ask my parents for some new Lego, but I
felt grown-up and every time gave up. Under the pretext of this opera now
I've bought some, and I live better :)
And the work of a composer is to build, to assemble, to plug; so when Dario
and I had been entrusted with this task by the Cidim committee, we were
thinking about the subject and the structure the opera should have had. At
some point he said "Let's call it Lego" and I answered "More: let's tell the
Lego story". Five minutes later I was browsing www.lego.com searching for
info.
Q: What are the personnell and the structure of the opera?
A: On our Lego stage there are a soprano, an actress, a (male) pop singer, a
vocal trio and a jazz trio (piano, contrabass and drums); in the orchestra
pit there's a 14 elements ensemble that features many wind and percussion
instruments.
The opera has been divided into 24 bricks, and take place on different
levels. There's the story of the Lego factory and the Lego world, a
melologue in six parts that from 1932 arrives to 1961, the year of the
invention of the wheel in the universe up to then static of the Lego bricks.
There's a short history of the jazz that runs in parallel, from swing to
cool to mainstream. And then there are plays, constuctions that come to life
on the stage and are relatetd to the Lego buildings (some of them are titled
Tunnel 33, Airport, Garage, From the window of my building). They are
meditations, digressions, observations about assembling and disassembling,
about building and travelling, about coloring and counting. They're singed
scenes, sometime only played, all of them very short because the rhythm of
the opera is always very fast. The last scene is named "In the box" and
everything gets settled so we're ready to start the next performance.
[...]
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The Lego Company officialy sponsored the event, and some Danish members of
the board of directors and some Italian managers attended the premiére.
More info at this link, but sorry, it's in Italian:
http://www.iperv.it/pocketopera/lego2000.htm
I'll be glad to provide more details if there's any interest.
Mario
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/~marioferrari
LUGNET member page: http://www.lugnet.com/people/members/?m=22
Proud member of ItLUG: http://www.itlug.org
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