| 1. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
A lost queen, a desperate woman, a mad female singer: researching the voice of Monteverdi’s Ottavia through vocal sounds , sighs and observations on Nothingness
- 2010
-
Ingår i: The Embodiment of Authority: Perspectives on Performances; 10–12 September, 2010; Department of Doctoral Studies in Musical Performance and Research, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract: With the musical manuscript of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea in my hand, I search for vocal colors of lamentation and madness. Thorugh the vocal part of Ottavia I meet sounding paradoxes and multiple levels of identity. Silent observation was the preparatory method of the first performing Ottavia in 1643, the roman singer Signora Anna Renzi. Every sound that came out of her body, seemed not memorized but born at the very moment. Something made her performance different from everything else heard or seen on stage. She entered along with a new genre: the public opera. She was considered a symbol for Nothingness. In a 17th century costume based on a portrait of Anna Renzi, I allow my own vocal instrument, embodied by MIND, BODY & VOICE, to enter stage. In dialoue the Chorus of OTHER (various references) my journey through the manuscript introduces new sensations of practical physicality, emotions & passions, intimacy & wholenss of being through experiences as well as theories of Nothingness. The two lamentations I address in this lecture-performance, Addio Roma and Disprezzata Regina, tells about a desperate woman having to leave her love, her home and her life. But at the same time Ottavia’s words reflect the sorrow and pain of a 17th century female singer having to leave her home, her family and her life in Rome, being banned from stages by the Pope. The words and sounds of Ottavia become analogue with my own sensuous experience of having to leave home and family behind. When MIND meet VOICE and BODY from inside Ottavia, the 17th century score become alive. Words, notes, practice and theory become references and brings me back in history, meanwhile they make me observe my own presence in the moment of performance.
|
|
| 2. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
An Exhibition of Madness in a Cabinet of Wonders: Results from an Experimental Process Into the Performative Space of a 17th Century Operatic Mad Scene
- 2012
-
Ingår i: The 15th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, hosted by the Music Department of the University of Southampton, UK.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- As suggested by Schramm (2005) the performative space in the 17th century was considered a scene of knowledge for both artists and scientists. Examples of such scenes were theatres, laboratories, and cabinets of curiosities (kunstkammer, wonder-room), designed as collection rooms ”of the astonishing and the horrible, the wonderful and the strange”. The aim of this performance-presentation is to exhibit a singer’s close reading and experimentation with Deidamia’s mad scene in Francesco Sacrati’s and Giulio Strozzi’s opera La Finta Pazza from 1641. The purpose is to present this mad scene as an example of such a collection of curious wonders, connecting the past with the present, nature with arts, and emphasizing the importance of truly considering the imaginative artistic research process in close connection to historical facts and theories in the production of a 17th century music drama. The presentation provides information from a singer’s close encounters with ’theatrical spaces’ such as Teatro San Cassiano in Venice; a re-created 17th century costume; a libretto and a musical score. As an artistic method, the physical meeting and experience of the theatrical space allows for the performer’s mind to engage in a dialogue with the self but also with others, resulting in a mental transformation of the scene and the stage. This dialogue supplies the performance with an input of analogies representing fast shifting multilayered and inter-subjective movements between realities, revealing the complex structure of the on-going performance activity as well as the complexity beyond the historical material observed from an artistic perspective. This performance-presentation is a vocal solo-exhibition of reflections and acts involved in an artistic research process, showing how the performer’s physical and mental movements can be directly linked with the performative and historical space, thus providing a curious scene of reflections based on the past ”within the Theater of the present, and the future world” Ref. Schramm, Helmar Kunstkammer - Laboratory – Theater in the ‘Theatrum Europaeum’: On the Transformation of Performative Space in the 17th Century, In: Collection – Laboratory – Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, ed. Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarze, Jan Lazardzig, Walter de Guyter, Berlin, 2005
|
|
| 3. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
An Exhibition of Madness in a Cabinet of Wonders: Results from an Experimental Process Into the Performative Space of a 17th Century Operatic Mad Scene
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts, The Impact of Performance as Research, hosted by the Theatre Academy Helsinki, Finland.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- As suggested by Schramm (2005) the performative space in the 17th century was considered a scene of knowledge for both artists and scientists. Examples of such scenes were theatres, laboratories, and cabinets of curiosities (kunstkammer, wonder-room), designed as collection rooms ”of the astonishing and the horrible, the wonderful and the strange”. The aim of this performance-presentation is to exhibit a singer’s close reading and experimentation with Deidamia’s mad scene in Francesco Sacrati’s and Giulio Strozzi’s opera La Finta Pazza from 1641. The purpose is to present this mad scene as an example of such a collection of curious wonders, connecting the past with the present, nature with arts, and emphasizing the importance of truly considering the imaginative artistic research process in close connection to historical facts and theories in the production of a 17th century music drama. The presentation provides information from a singer’s close encounters with ’theatrical spaces’ such as Teatro San Cassiano in Venice; a re-created 17th century costume; a libretto and a musical score. As an artistic method, the physical meeting and experience of the theatrical space allows for the performer’s mind to engage in a dialogue with the self but also with others, resulting in a mental transformation of the scene and the stage. This dialogue supplies the performance with an input of analogies representing fast shifting multilayered and inter-subjective movements between realities, revealing the complex structure of the on-going performance activity as well as the complexity beyond the historical material observed from an artistic perspective. This performance-presentation is a vocal solo-exhibition of reflections and acts involved in an artistic research process, showing how the performer’s physical and mental movements can be directly linked with the performative and historical space, thus providing a curious scene of reflections based on the past ”within the Theater of the present, and the future world” Ref. Schramm, Helmar Kunstkammer - Laboratory – Theater in the ‘Theatrum Europaeum’: On the Transformation of Performative Space in the 17th Century, In: Collection – Laboratory – Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, ed. Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarze, Jan Lazardzig, Walter de Guyter, Berlin, 2005
|
|
| 4. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
“IN SEARCH FOR THE TRUE VOICE OF PASSION” Investigating the essence of passion through ornaments and declamation in performance of 17th century vocal music
- 2007
-
Ingår i: Music Institutions with Doctoral Arts Studies (MIDAS) International Conference, 20 april, 2007, Royal College of Music, London, UK.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Can one really understand the essence of passion in a voice? To what extent can ornaments and declamation provoke the passions in 17th century vocal music? ‘Passionate Women Voices on Stage and Interpretation of 17th Century Vocal Music’ is the working title of my PhD-project (initiated during autumn 2006) and it is an interdisciplinary study combining interpretation of 17th century vocal music with science and history of emotions, gender, culture, practical knowledge and phenomenological hermeneutics. Through a process of bibliographical archival research, phenomenological methods, and self-experienced performances, my aim will be to better understand the minds and emotions of women performers during the 17th century. This new perspectives will help me to explore new possibilities in the art of performing vocal music from the Baroque era. French composer and author Benigne de Bacilly (ca.1625-1690), published his treatise ‘Remarque Curieuses sur L’art de Bien Chanter’ (A Commentary upon the Art of Proper Singing) in 1668, and this is one the most informative sources we have, dealing with the issues of vocal performance during the 17th century, along with the Italian composer Giulio Caccini’s ‘Le Nuove Musiche’ from 1602. The French style of performing was very much influenced by the Italian vocal approach, but the French school added more meaning to the importance of the language, words, syllables and declamation, based on rhetorical issues. (This has been argued for in recent studies by musicologist C. Gordon-Seifert .) It also showed a sensitive and more introspective spirit that differed quite distinctly from the Italian style. But are these kind of historical sources enough, or can the music tell us more? Can the 17th century singer tell us more through her reflections in the mirror of history? My aim with this presentation is to explore a French vocal prelude Bacilly, and through phenomenological methods try to understand how words and tones can reach it’s highest level of Passion by different use of rhetorical tools in ornamentation and declamation. Interest in compositions and composers has until now fascinated scholars in musicology, and there seems to have been a rather absent consideration for the performer/co-composer/improviser, and his/her importance for a better understanding of the actual musical delivery. My intention is to enter the world of the 17th century woman performer - her mind and her soul; to explore her reality, through texts and historical sources, and create a vivid experience of her life; then to apply this knowledge and experience to my own performance. My aim is collect the facts presented by scholar in various field and try to hear the words being shaped by her mouth, to see her body enact the emotions on stage, and to understand the desire of her soul, while her body claimed its force to express. I will explore literature and arts; study gestures, body language and movements: all with the intension of understanding the passions from the past. Reflection and performance will be a means for transporting me further, to other realities. A dialogue between the past and the present, singers then and now, will enhance a visualization of a new creative flame that can inspire the art of singing for the future. It is clear that the improvisation of ornaments and flourishes were applied as tools, not with the sole purpose of extraordinary ‘show-off’ at this point in history, but intended to move and caress the deepest parts of the listener’s soul. The voice aimed to creep in under the skin of the audience. My aim is to search for the path to this kind of experience, the essence of the Nature of Experience.
|
|
| 5. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
“Lasciatemi morire” o farò “La Finta Pazza”: Embodying Vocal Nothingness on Stage in Italian and French 17th Century Operatic Laments and Mad Scenes
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This music research drama thesis explores and presents a singer’s artistic research process from the first meeting with a musical score until the first steps of the performance on stage. The aim has been to define and formulate an understanding in sound as well as in words around the concept of pure voice in relation to the performance of 17th century vocal music from a 21st century singer’s practice-based perspective with reference to theories on nothingness, the role of the 17th century female singer, ornamentation (over-vocalization) and the singing of the nightingale. !e music selected for this project is a series of lamentations and mad scenes from Italian and French 17th century music dramas and operas allowing for deeper investigation of differences and similarities in vocal expression between these two cultural styles. The thesis is presented in three parts: a Libretto, a performance of the libretto (DVD) and a Cannocchiale (that is, a text following the contents of the Libretto). In the libretto the Singer’s immediate inner images, based on close reading of the musical score have been formulated and performed in words, but also recorded and documented in sound and visual format, as presented in the performance on the DVD. In the Cannocchiale, the inner images of the Singer’s encounter with the score have been observed, explored, questioned, highlighted and viewed in and from different perspectives. The process of the Singer is embodied throughout the thesis by Mind, Voice and Body, merged in a dialogue with the Chorus of Other, a vast catalogue of practical and theoretical references including an imagined dialogue with two 17th century singers. As a result of this study, textual reflections parallel to vocal experimentation have led to a deeper understanding of the importance of considering the concept of nothingness in relation to Italian 17th century vocal music practice, as suggested in musicology. The concept of je-ne-sais-quoi in relation to the interpretation of French 17th century vocal music, approached from the same performance methodology and perspective as has been done with the Italian vocal music, may provide a novel approach for exploring the complexity involved in the creative process of a performing artist.
|
|
| 6. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
'Lasciatemi morire' & 'Rochers vous etes sourds': interpreting Arianna's tears, sighs and pain by investigating Italian and French ornaments through vocal practice-based research
- 2009
-
Ingår i: Singing Music from 1500 to 1900: style, Technique, Knowledge, Asssertion, Experiment. 7-10 juli 2009. National Early Music Association International Conference, University of York, UK.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- ABSTRACT: In my PhD research I depart from a female singer’s perspective of interpreting 17th century opera laments , based on musicologist Mauro Calcagno’s statement signifying the voice of the female singer as a symbol of Nothing in association with the concept of aesthetics in the early 17th century opera genre . The female singer, he points out, justified the relevance of “pure voice” and “over-vocalization” referring to two recurring tropes, pronounced within a larger discourse among 17th century intellectuals in Italy and France, concerned with the concept of aesthetics: the concept of nothingness and the singing of the nightingale. In this presentation I show my perceptions of the voice of Arianna. My aim is to better understand the use of ornamentation in my performance of Italian and French 17th century vocal music. Knowledge of ornamentation can be obtained by investigating at depth the singer’s process from the first encounter with the text and musical score, to the actual performance of stage. There are two important aspects I take into consideration. First, the intellectual discourse, contemporary to the creations and performances of the two laments by Monteverdi and Lambert, carries a great deal of information significant to vocal interpretation. Second, the oriental ornamentation is reflected upon the arts and architecture in Venice during the 16th and 17th centuries, but has not yet been fully addressed in relation to vocal ornamentation in the 17th century opera repertory. I have been observing the life and career of Signora Anna Renzi Romana, one of the first opera prima donnas active in Venice during mid 17th century. Her interpretations of laments and mad scenes made a great impact on her audience as well and on the intellectual academies supporting the early operatic events in Venice. As the sounding voices of the Greek Sirens seducing Odysseus and his sailors , Anna Renzi and her female colleagues seduced their audiences in the Venetian opera theaters. Renzi’s performances are described in a volume published to her honor in 1644, “La Glorie della Signora Anna Renzi Romana”. In my research I explore and reflect upon the vocal sounds of ‘trillo’, ‘esclamazione’ and ‘coup de gosier’ by merging these vocal ornaments and my experience of PURE VOICE to theories of Nothingness, debated by Italian and French17th century intellectuals in Venice and Paris. I also combine their thoughts and theories to philosophical theories of Nothing referring to Jean-Paul Sartre and Marcia Ça Cavalcante Schuback . My personal experience of the lamenting sound is then analyzed along with the glorious description of Renzi’s performances of the laments. Finally in my search for sources of vocal ornaments, I listen to voices and vocal music from the ‘east’, following the 16th and 17th century Venetian trading routes. The Eastern throat–beating ornaments and vibratos appears similar to the ones described by 17th century composers and authors like Giulio Caccini and Benigne de Bacilly, and they inspire my research towards different possible ways of performing the sighs, tears and pains of Arianna. This research and presentation is part of my PhD research project“Passionate Women’s Voices on Stage and an Interpretation of the 17th Century Lamenti and Scene di Pazzie”. See: http://www.konst.gu.se/forskarutbildning/doktorander/Elisabeth_Belgrano/
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
MADNESS as METHOD: An intra-‐active encounter between 17th century operatic madness, artistic research and posthuman theories
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Creativity: Method or Madness? 4th International PG Conference, 26-‐27 May 2015, College of Arts and Humanities, The University of Glasgow.
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How are we as human beings in an increasingly intra-acting global community going about when facing moments of terror and disasters? What can be understood by observing our own acts of knowing, questioning and understanding such moments? This paper performs an encounter between Madness as a creative method and a model for making sense of the senseless; a historical source of a French 17th century musical setting of Leçons de Ténèbres - Lessons in the shadow of darkness - capturing the fall of Jerusalem as presented in the Book of Lamentations; an artistic research study carried out in Jerusalem in August 2014 during the battle between Israel and Gaza; and posthuman theories. The operatic mad scene produced by Venetian academics around 1640, was highly esteemed by its audience, while it also “came to represent an up-side down anti-rhetorical opposition to Renaissance ideals” (Belgrano 2011). This mad scene is somehow mirroring ‘the uneasiness’ sensed around us today in our global society. As a method it suggests an holistic approach, inviting individual units to enter the stage on equal terms allowing for a more broad and deep investigation into processes of understanding and knowing. The artist’s performance of madness brings the audience into an entanglement of walking, talking, singing, critically confronting, animating, ornamenting, articulating and shaping a non-existing form. As suggested by Barad (2012): “a cacophony of whispered screams, gasps, and cries, an infinite multitude of indeterminate beings diffracted through different spacetimes”. Madness (or false madness) is a creative becoming in itself. It is an example of mattering as in meaning-making and knowledge-processing, based on the indeterminable and affinity. The outcome of this performance-paper is a potential creative model for understanding and meeting every day practices, ‘doings’ of human beings and emergent issues of a highly complex global community.
|
|
| 9. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
Madness dressed in paradoxes: experimenting inside a costume of a 17th century prima donna.
- 2012
-
Ingår i: International conference: Fashioning Opera and Musical Theatre: Stage Costumes in Europe from the Late Renaissance to 1900. Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (Italy).
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This performance presentation will demonstrate a 21st century singer’s close study of Deidamia’s mad scene from Francesco Sacrati and Giulio Strozzi’s opera La Finta Pazza from 1641. It is an example of artistic research inspired by the career and a portrait of one of the first opera singers in Venice, Anna Renzi Romana. The methods are based on artistic reflections essential to the development of the singer’s understanding of the scene, following the various realities encountered along the research process into the musical score and the libretto. The portrait of Anna Renzi was published in the volume Le Glorie della signora Anna Renzi Romana from 1644 by members of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti. The portrait exhibits a woman dressed in a male fashion, with a casacca underneath a doublet upper body with paned sleeves. Her curly hair is falling down on her shoulders and she has a fashionable short fringe, resembling more of a male hairstyle. Her female attributes in the portrait are the hairpins, earrings, brooch and necklace. Her costume proves to fit perfectly well with Renzi’s highly celebrated interpretations and performances of paradoxical mad scenes, demanding her ability to rapidly transform into male and female characters. The costume also inspires the 21st century performer to further explore the concept of paradox, both vocally as well as dramatically.
|
|
| 10. |
- Belgrano, Elisabeth, 1970
(författare)
-
Mourning through the voice of Ottavia. Performing aesthetic experiences of a ritual
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Interdisciplinary conference: Venice and Ritual, Princeton University, January 11-12, 2014.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The ritual of mourning became a central performance act in 17th century Venetian opera. According to Rosand “the lament embodied the operatic ideal” . Throughout history women mourners have traditionally been performing sounds of tears and sighs at funerals and in wailing songs from regions such as Mesopotamia, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Finnish and Russian Karelia. No matter of specific genre, vocal lamentation invites the singer to revisit lived experiences, memories and dreams, while simultaneously embodying this knowledge in the vocal performance act. Anna Renzi, one of the most celebrated singers in 17th century Venetian opera, was “endowed with such lifelike expression that her responses and speeches seem not memorized but born at the very moment.” How did she use memories, lived experiences and imagination in the very moment of performing a lamentation? As Ottavia she performed the passions of a queen in exile. As Renzi she mourned for having to leave her land and her family expelled from Rome by religious power. In this paper I exhibit a singer’s artistic process of vocally embodying Ottavia’s lament A Dio Roma from L’incoronazione di Poppea. Through the “very moment” of a performance act I demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of leaving, loosing and departing is knitted into a chaotic web of memories and imaginations linking the past with the future through presence. The purpose of this paper is to point out the importance of considering and defining the singer’s complex understanding and embodiment of aesthetic experiences when staging an opera production.
|
|
