Livietta e Tracollo

Livietta e Tracollo was conceived as a comic intermezzo, to be performed over the two intervals of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Adriano in Siria. Over time it has become an independent work, thanks to its lightness and the comic verve that animates it. Lively and pulsating, Pergolesi’s music contrasts with a comic plot that offers extremely interesting food for thought on the very current issues of identity, disguise, truth and lies. To be and to appear: Tracollo pretends to be a woman to deceive and cheat, and when he reveals himself as a man he will do the same; the same happens to Livietta, who pretends to be a man to obtain justice, and will continue to claim it even as a woman. In a whirlwind of deceptions, the two pretend to be astrologers, crazy, honest, poor, rich, dying, death itself. And finally, both say they are in love. The meagre dramaturgy becomes a tour de force, confronting and questioning everything. The original eighteenth-century score also disguises itself, here cloaked in electronic sounds, yet transfuses vivacity and joy in ambiguous reverberations that allow us to glimpse shadows and lights, fictions and truths. What remains is love, freed from disguises and roles.