HYPERION/ DIOTIMA

Daniele Rizzo

Hyperion/Diotima – Natura Dèi Teatri 2014. Art, useful passion

From Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion, the character from the famous Symposium is the protagonist of the new creation created by Lenz Rifrazioni and the Polish musician Paul Wirkus. An extraordinary manifestation of Platonic thought (she was the one who introduced Socrates to true ideal love) and the female pole of epistolary exchange with her beloved Hyperion in Hölderlin's novel, Diotima is «one of the most complex figures in Hölderlin's mythography». Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto then returned to investigate the «German poet, philosopher, romantic playwright» after «the staging of the three drafts of The Death of Empedocles, Oedipus the Tyrant, Antigone, Hölderlin-Foscolo, The Age of Querci» between 1991 and 1994. A renewed interest that, not surprisingly, occurs within the three-year project of the Natura Dèi Teatri Festival inspired by «philosophical suggestions taken from the work of Gilles Deleuze», because the theme of difference, of the ideological conception of identity and repetition, of the attempt at revolt against a dialectical destiny with homologating and lacerating outcomes, is the ideal conceptual framework to pose the fundamental question of «in-depth investigation of the languages of contemporary creation». Paul Wirkus' live electronic sounds contribute to giving full density to the setting of a splendidly simple staging with exemplary visual impact for how he manages to convey in the (scenographic) sign the perfect coincidence of meaning and signifier, thus supporting the full power of Nietzsche's statement «there are no facts, only interpretations» and the radicality of an intuition that recognized (inter)subjective interpretation's ability to shape consciences and discipline bodies. An intuition reiterated almost explicitly on stage («Forget time, and don't count the days of life. What are the hundred years in front of the moment when two of us feel and only then touch») and which still today is relevant (therefore historically inaccurate), even if debased in the idea that –to paraphrase that quote – only opinions exist and not arguments. The round, white, and tense cloth that Valentina Barbarini passes through in concentration, while reciting fragments retranslated from the Hyperion, is the sublimated representation of the fullness of the Parmenidean being in all its (empirical) paradoxicality. Indivisible and perfect, immobile and identical (for reason), it appears (in the senses) to be acted upon by an incongruity irreconcilable by the presence of that human in progress which, in fact, we will see physically and not projected. Therefore concrete, outside and not inside (except as a shadow), because within it only the images of a Nature can flow from which man – unbearable «sour grapes … among the sweet grapes» – is banished. Maieutics and erotica, the creative power of art and nature in conflict with a man who, proclaiming himself sapiens, has forgotten his own animality, in Lenz's Diotima / Hyperion we see dramaturgical research converging with investigation in favor of a renewed visual restitution of primordial existential dilemmas: the yearning for infinity that structurally torments the human being and his inevitable shipwreck («But man is god as soon as man! And if he's a god, then he's handsome! [..] But my arms were increasingly tired and anguish dragged me down, inexorable»); the longing for a pantheistic harmony («there was me, yours. A flower among flowers») and the perception of historical defeat in modernity («Defending ourselves from the flies will be our future occupation. Gnawing on things in the world, like children. Getting old among the old is the worst thing. They start from the heart and return to the heart, the veins»). Diotima is then the intimately contradictory symbol of the risk of disengagement and loneliness («What do I care about the shipwreck of the world! I know nothing but my blessed island»). A risk that, seen within this specific artistic context «an industrial building on the historic outskirts of Parma» where culture, in addition to resisting, continues to endure, seems at all demeaning, but rather dispensing strength and passion. Exactly like that song of hope and beauty that was Diotima for Hyperion. A show of disarming coherence.

Andrea Alfieri

Natura Dèi Teatri. The contamination of Lenz Rifrazioni from Verdi to Manzoni

Still in the field of sounds, Natura Dèi Teatri has not failed to grant an elaborate excursus in electronic and experimental music, proposing the live sets of Andrea Azzali, historic creator of Lenz's music, in “Corpo Sacro”, specially moved to the spaces of a seventeenth-century church, and the artistic collaboration between Paul Wirkus, an acclaimed composer of Polish origin dedicated to minimalist improvisation, and Lenz Rifrazioni himself, in “Hyperion/Diotima”, a work inspired by the epistolary novel of Friedrich Hölderlin, a German playwright to whom Lenz dedicated a very long research journey at his debut. Musical proposals where, however, the intertwining of sound compositions and performances is always sedimented in an expanded and contaminating boundary.

Laura Bevione

German Romanticism According to the Lenz

The Lenz family has returned to work with an author, Friedrich Hölderlin, whom they have dated several times in the past. The chosen text is an early epistolary novel, Hyperion, which the German writer dedicates to Diotima – according to classical literature the woman loved by the unfortunate Hyperion – the identity behind which lies the woman with whom he was in love. The Parma-based company chooses to cast a single actress –Valentina Barbarini, a powerful and highly emotional presence– in the roles of both lovers and to bring the acting into dialogue with the powerful and obsessive music specially composed by Paul Wirkus, a Polish electronic musician who has been collaborating with Lenz for some time, and with the images scrolling on a circular screen at the back of the stage. The word – poignant and passionate – is amplified by the anti-naturalist and ardent direction of the acting as well as by the anxious rhythm of the music, elements that are only apparently contrasted by the landscapes and natural details that occur on the screen. Romantically, nature is a mirror not deforming but truthful of the soul –rather than the external appearance– of men. A show, like Adelchi, that Amanda hopes many will be able to see.

Mariagrazia Manghi

Hyperion and Diotima merge for Lenz

Hyperion and Diotima, the hero and his beloved, become a being alone in Lenz Rifrazioni's new creation, created specifically for Natura Dèi Teatri 2014, inspired by Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion. Valentina Barbarini takes on stage the challenge of a text that takes fragments of the German Romantic's epistolary work. The actress appears announced by pounding chimes, like a shadow from behind a large circular screen. Dressed and hooded is Hyperion for the first part of the performance; without a headdress she repeats the same sequence of words and gives voice to Diotima. The dramatic choice favored tragic reflection on the existence and meaning of man and his actions “something that boils and ferments like chaos, rotten like a tree that never manages to mature”. A journey into the thought of the German lyric poet suspended between classicism and romanticism and also into his madness. Hölderlin forcefully returns to the theme of the pantheistic celebration of nature, an expression of a totality in which man loses himself and finds himself, of the wanderings of love and pain, the true dimension of reality: “If your garden is full of flowers, why doesn't its scent reach me?”. A tragic conception in which the extreme opposition of the romantic soul is consummated, “I wanted to build a temple to the God of enthusiasm, but my arms were increasingly tired and anguish dragged me down inexorably”. Valentina Barbarini's vocal presence is powerful. The music, an electronic creation by Polish musician Paul Wirkus, is an obsessive, at times pressing rhythmic pulse that accompanies rather than dialogues. The visual impact is, as always in Lenz's works, refined and sophisticated in the choice of images and color combinations. Trees, leaves, insects scroll and overlap on the screen, a whole that man could draw on to look into infinity, resolved in a labored swarming that recalls inexorable decomposition. A tragic vision, the awareness of a loss of the sense of the divine and the harmony that Lenz makes his own: “What do I care about the shipwreck of the world. I know nothing but my blessed island”.