DULCE MAL

Year of release: 1999

Dulce mal is an altarpiece opera. Without a conductive thread, plot can’t exist. A top of this thread is in the church of Santa Clara of Avignon where, in 1327, Petrarca sees Laura for first time and falls in love immediately.
There is no doubt that Petrarca's love for Laura was absolutely platonic, therefore unsatisfied, unidirectional and probably not declared for different causes than poetical ones. According to the proper Petrarca, this love kept him in a condition of constant torment from which, in spite of his efforts, he could never get rid of and plunged our poet in the desperation when the Black Death took the life from his dear  twenty-one years later.
The thread about which I talk about is Love, that “sweet pain", entangled together in the poetical loving speech which protagonists are a 'you' and an ‘I' personified in a couple who walk from the nostalgia or the abandonment up to the crystalline serenity, the loving pure passion, the loving requested or brutally described kiss. The fire leads finally the lovers to the death, death that increases without words. 

Music, Libretto & Direct Electroacoustics Eduardo Polonio. Direction Ramon Simó. Stage Toni Rueda. Mezzosoprano Montserrat Bertral. Barítone Xavier Mestres. Projections Ramon Simó, Antoni Rueda. Customs Amadeu Ferré. Producer Claudio Zulian. Executive Producer Montse Herrera. Production Assistant Glòria Balañà.

With the support of Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y la Música (INAEM). Presented in 15º Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Alicante.

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