Gesang (Durchgangsriten)

Ritos de Perpassagem

[English: Rites of Throughpassage;

German: Durchgangsriten;

French: Rites d’Outrepassage;

Italian: Riti di Perpassaggi]

NeutrinOpera in 2 Trans-Acts

(June 2018/February 2019; revised in September 2019)

for Narrator, 7 Solo Voices, 16-voice Choir, 8 Percussionists, Orchestra (31 musicians) and Electronics (on 16 channels)

“Je traverse légèrement la nuit réactionnaire.” (Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973, page 45)

About Ritos de Perpassagem [Rites of Throughpassage]

The rites of passage, rituals of margin through which humans ceremonialize fundamental stages and situations of their lives, are the background object of this Opera about Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism. The beginning of Pythagoreanism and what is considered its end (Johannes Kepler) intersect in parallel temporalities and events, interspersed by characters who embody in their voices their own speech, but also the speech of others (Pascal in the voice of Pythagoras; Wolfgang Pauli in that of Kepler, etc.).

In an echo of the transmigration of souls, Pythagorean theory, the characters themselves transmigrate to different bodies and assume disparate voices, sometimes even of another sex, and sometimes even in simultaneity. And in the midst of this transpassage of characters and voices, we also have sound-characters: the Neutrino-sounds and the Universe-sounds, that also never reappear in the same way; the first ones, associated to micro-particles, to the nervous system, stress, neurosis, tinnitus, oppression, drama; the second ones, to the macro-Universe, to the heartbeat and blood circulation, to the appeased cosmic contemplation, to reflective thinking, humanism, pleasure. It even reminds us of John Cage's episode when he enters an anechoic chamber, where all sound should be absent, in order to hear inside himself a very high sound and a very low sound... And not even there was silence.

The Neutrinos, in turn, are as relevant here as the characters and the rites of passage: they are intriguing tiny particles, discovered at the end of the first half of the 20th century by Wolfgang Pauli, which travel almost at the speed of light and in a straight line, going through all bodies, and, because they have no electrical charge, they go through everything without interacting with anything.

Pythagoras created the word Philosophy, invented and advocated Vegetarianism, preached listening to the Harmony of the Spheres and laid the foundations of mathematics and astronomy. He founded in Crotona a secret society (in which – historical achievement – women were already accepted) in which everyone shared everything, including their goods: the first "communist" society known in history. For this reason, he is seen in Rites of Throughpassage metaphorically as a "Neutrino" in the history of humanity, pervading music, science, religion, ethics, philosophy, mysticism, mathematics, astronomy, politics... A "Neutrino", however, without the neutrality that typifies this particle. Due to the vastness of its repercussions, its influence, veiled or explicit, is, in my opinion, greater than that of Christ.

Amidst the multifaceted, spiraling, and interwoven web of references and intertextualities, supported by a mosaic of texts in nine languages (Portuguese, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, German, Greek, and Russian) ranging, among others, from Anaxagoras to Roland Barthes, from Pythagoras, Plato, and Architas to Maiakovski, Fernando Pessoa, and Augusto de Campos, the figure of Karl Marx (on the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2018) emerges, pronouncing on how he sees Man.

In parallel, a screen suspended at the stage mouth makes the Pythagorean veil of the Opera's beginning gradually transmute into the web of Écriture (scripture), and the musical concert itself is celebrated as a great – and perhaps as the most abstract and radical – ritual of trans-passage.

Flo Menezes

* * * * *

Personal statement from 2019 to a journalist about Rites of Throughpassage

I call this work a "NeutrinÓpera", because, just like Pythagoras, it crosses the operatic genre in time and space like a Neutrino. In fact, the Neutrinos, added to the Rites of Passage, constitute the two elements that combine with the main element: Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism.

It is as if Pythagoras was seen by me as a Neutrino (particles that travel almost at the speed of light and pass through billions of bodies with almost no interaction with them), a Neutrino in human history, traveling, however, slowly and interacting with almost everything: Physics, Music, Cosmology, Politics, Ethics, Religion and, of course, Philosophy (because it was Pythagoras who invented the name). I venture to say that Pythagoras influenced humanity more than Christ.

There is no linear narrative, no "story" to be told. I break taboos and revolutionize Opera under several aspects: simultaneity of scenes; (Pythagorean) transmigration of characters to distinct voices and sexes; existence of sound-characters (the Universe-sounds and the Neutrino-sounds); there is neither beginning, nor end, nor "interval" of the Opera: the Opera extrapolates the theater architecture and the concert time; there is a Narrator: the Opera is also Oratorio; there are electronics: there is even acousmatic music (by the way, the "acousmatic" were a Pythagorean school); there is scene of absolute silence; there is game and audience participation; I determine visual elements that remain arbitrary in a conventional Opera, etc.

Finally, I put my finger on the wound of the genre, in my opinion quite problematic, because of its 5 fundamental ingredients – music, text, scenery, costumes and lighting –, only the first two are necessary and permanent; the others are arbitrary and everyone does what they want. Not at mine! There is freedom of creation, obviously, but I think visual elements are necessary, culminating even in the projection of a genius poem: PÓS-TUDO, by Augusto de Campos, which will be recited by none other than... Karl Marx!

It is a mosaic carefully stitched by me in 9 languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German, Latin, Russian and Greek) around Pythagoreanism, with authors that go from Pythagoras and Anaxagoras to Roland Bathes, Fernando Pessoa, Augusto de Campos and others. I had already worked in this way around the verbal transmission of histories in labORAtorio and with the passions throughout the history of philosophy in Retrato Falado das Paixões. Here, however, the focus is threefold: Pythagoreanism, Neutrinos, and Rites of Passage. Life episodes of the beginning of Pythagoreanism – Pythagoras – and of its considered "end" – Johannes Kepler – intertwine, like the threads of the spider's web that traps and suspends Arachne in the last scene, in which I interweave Ovid, St. Augustine, and Roland Barthes: a suspension of scripture/writing itself – because we are barely understood in capitalism and even less so in the current neo-fascist era, but also because, if things remain what they are, we artists and philosophers always have our feet a little above the ground.

Every composer who accepts the mold of a genre is doomed to mediocrity. When composing, one must ask about the meanings of things: the historical and the current. There is nothing more odious than "conformation". The mere and simple reproduction of the number is also strange to me: I don't want to do my fifth or sixth Opera; I want to do THE Opera! Nonconformity is the verb that moves me, always. It is good and pleasurable to look at things and see them from an angle that nobody sees, because the illusion that we understand something is the fruit of ignorance: "That which is seen is an aspect of the invisible," said Anaxagoras; and I would add: that which is heard is an aspect of the inaudible.

Flo Menezes

Some significant articles about the work (in Portuguese):

By Andrei Reina for the Revista BRAVO!, September 25, 2019:

https://medium.com/revista-bravo/anti-%C3%B3pera-b5ab141bf399

By Maurício Ayer, September 25, 201:

https://outraspalavras.net/mauricioayer/pode-a-opera-celebrar-o-multiplo-e-o-rebelde/