PROMETHEUS OR ICARUS? IDEA AND IDEOLOGY IN NONO'S ‘AL GRAN SOLE CARICO D'AMORE’

Extract

Did Luigi Nono succeed in creating the ‘new music theatre’ that he wished to create – and does his second theatrical work Al gran sole carico d'amore (1975) represent such a theatre? The theatre was certainly a constant siren beckoning the composer. Right from the start of his creative life, Nono's primary concern as a composer had been with musical expression, and he cast the most powerful and often provocative literary texts in musical terms, as can be seen in the settings he made of Lorca poems during the early 1950s.