SPE - SPE - Performance and Exhibition Space
20 July 2014
9:00 p.m.

Napolincanto

Mozart and Pulcinella

Comic serenata about a Neapolitan Night
by Gianni Aversano

Napolincanto
Andrea Carotenuto and Gianni Aversano actors/singers
Paolo Propoli guitar and drum
Paolo Sasso violin

Two musicians, on stage, play a Mozart overture surrounded by urban detritus; towards the end the storyteller Pulcinella and his assistant appear and perform the last tarantella-like moments of a travelling puppet show.

Night falls and Pulcinella finds himself beneath the window of his beloved. He begins his usual serenade singing arias by Paisiello, Pergolesi, villanelles from the sixteenth century and tarantellas of the seventeenth century, all music that Mozart would have heard (and undoubtedly did) during his stay in Naples. Looking out of the window, however, is the fifteen-year-old Mozart who has been enjoying the serenade.

The “Lazzarone” king (Ferdinand IV was known as the ‘lazzarone’ or king of the idlers) is also passing through the alleyway hoping to meet the young Austrian at night, without the knowledge of his awful Queen Caroline. Through the staged reading of extracts from the letters of the young Amadeus to his sister, we witness the emotions and meetings that took place in those days. Hilarious original and reworked extracts from the classics of the Neapolitan Commedia dell’Arte, enrich this journey through the three centuries leading up to the birth of the “classic” Neapolitan song.

Mozart e Pulcinella