Oráculos & Ladainhas

I see nothing, I hear nothing. We follow in procession the steps of wailers and pythonesses — one step, two steps, three, stop! — towards ancient silhouettes and future voices. The stones speak! Let us await the circling steps. I see nothing, I hear nothing…

We go to meet what, whom, who awaits us, has awaited…? We accompany a cortege in which waiting and seeking become confused, in a campaign now archaeological, now mystical, but always nostalgic for various distant times. There is no certainty that the encounter will succeed, no time nor day of celebration has been set. And, should it happen, who says we will see or hear them…

But we do not journey alone, nor entirely by chance. The audience will be guided and (mis)directed by two characters who despair in their own thoughts. Each character is divided into two voices: on the side of those who seek, two registers alternate — a guide and a wailer. Among those who await visitors from the future, communication oscillates between the voice of the oracle and that of the pythia.

We will not know where or when the journeys end or begin, nor what we are probing, nor whether we will find what we do not know we seek. We join the processions, in the expectation of going to meet things, without knowing who awaits or who has passed through there.

In FIO, each opera was built for a specific space. And this place is magnificent, as read in the Gregorian melody Terribilis est locus iste, which is the compositional basis for Guillaume Dufay’s motet Nuper Rosarum Flores, composed in 1436 specifically for the consecration of the Cathedral of Santa Maria delle Fiori in Florence. The influence of Renaissance music is present in Oráculos & Ladainhas through the quotation of the motet’s melodic line and the specialization in the Venetian polychoral style – cori spezzati – which in the Salão Nobre will find walls to echo from.

Prelude

The wailer mourns those who did not return.

Act I: “Procession and Spat”

The procession begins.

Some set out in search of those who have disappeared. Others await, expectant of those who may appear. The former despair to find, led by a body of two voices that divides into guide or wailer. The latter doubt in the waiting, in dialogue between the prescient voice of the Oracle and the almost childlike enthusiasm of the priest for the beings of the future.

The spat is perceptible only to the audience, which fortuitously witnesses the chance double procession. None of the characters are aware of the other group.

They are strangers to one another.

Act II: “Encounter and Waiting”

They arrive at a place where everyone awaits. But they hear nothing, see nothing. Some perhaps hear, but do not see. Others think they see, but hear nothing. They wait together for something to happen.

Act III: “Separation and Exchange”

Those who were seeking remain waiting. Those who were waiting begin to seek.