“Le portique ouvert sur les cieux inconnus”
Light and Spirituality in Luigi Dallapiccola's music
Charlotte Ginot-Slacik
In this essay Charlotte Ginot-Slacik explores three major operatic works by Luigi Dallapiccola, Volo di Notte (1940), Il Prigioniero (1949) and Ulisse (1968), and shows how the theme of light underpins them and evolves. Light, as one of the finest symbols of the spiritual, liberty and hope, is then to be found in the texts, in the very words of the exiled and tormented characters, but also in music itself. Thus, the analysis unfolds in combining contextual, thematic and formal reflections, in order to grasp a fundamental element of Dallapiccola's musical aesthetics.
