Silenced for a long time by the lockdown, I Silenti could finally scream it out. The music theater piece by composer and saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol and blind violinist Tcha Limberger under the direction of Lisaboa Houbrechts had to flee abroad for its premiere, but in the Antwerp Bourla they were now able to let their voices be heard to the Belgian audience as well.
Still limited, that audience, but those who were there could listen to their sizzling message without hindrance, except for the face mask. And it sounded refreshingly loud, but also surprisingly intimate.
It is an initiative of the Théâtre de Namur that had asked Cassol long ago to do something for them. Coproducers were quickly found. This allowed the production to tour various theaters. Originally the premiere was planned in Namur, but as the COVID figures only went down tediously slowly, the company had to go to Luxembourg to start, then went to Lyon and Marseille and it has now finally arrived in its home country.
Fabrizio Cassol bases his composition this time on a poignant song he heard from Tcha Limberger. A song that this violinist knows from the Manouche tradition of his family. When Tcha sings it, it evokes in the composer the lamenting madrigals of Monteverdi. He lets both sound worlds merge in a sorrowful memory of the Roma genocide.
Cassol: "The idea to do that actually came because those madrigals are a sort of letters, written about love, farewell, death, war too and I fragment, combine, transform and manipulate them into symbols of the letters that the Roma were never able to write about their holocaust. And I have those stories sung by three singers and by the central figure Tcha Limberger himself. So we're immediately back to how opera once began."
It was Alain Platel who introduced him to the wonderful blind Tcha Limberger from a Manouche family fifteen years ago. As virtuosic on the violin as that other Manouche Django Reinhardt on the guitar.
Rescued from oblivion
The concept of diaspora is most strongly associated with the Jewish people. But gypsies also travel and live scattered across the continent. The persecution of the Jews, and the genocide planned by the Nazi regime, is well known. Much less publicity has been given to the persecution and genocide of Tcha's people. And he sings that tragedy in the only poignant song heard in his Manouche family about it.
No one knows who wrote it or when, who sang it first: "Allow me to rescue them from oblivion with my voice. Give me the chance to see my people again."
So his grandmother sang, so Tcha sings it, and madrigals circle that sad song. With the always high and clear voice of Claron Mcfadden and also Nicola Wemyss and Jonatan Alvarado. A small ensemble supports them, with an excellent Philippe Thuriot on accordion supplemented by instruments from various musical traditions around the Mediterranean. Strong music that perhaps can bear a stronger mise-en-scène, without losing the sobriety that was in it now.
In the background, four times chilling archival images of Roma in concentration camps pass by. They are edited black and white photos, including one of a burnt-out caravan and Roma children behind barbed wire. Slowly they turn blood red.
Haunting sacred liturgy
Fabrizio Cassol hopes that with his music you experience the same emotion as the one you sometimes experience when listening to sacred music.
"We tell a story, Tcha tells a Manouche story that is very important, about I Silenti, those who are doomed and forced to silence. But you must not translate that into the meaning of people who are silent, no, it is about the Biblical meaning of those who are reduced to silence: those last will be first. We must speak about them."
"Compare it to the pandemic we are experiencing. Many have died in all silence. Every day on radio and TV we heard that eerie cool tally of thousands who died. These are hard facts and events. But was there one moment of national mourning, of solemnity?"
"I don't want to make hard music about and for hard facts. I want solemnity. Not so much mourning, but a moment of solemnity, a sacred liturgy for those who are forgotten. That is what I want to achieve with my music."
He gracefully couples the gentleness of that madrigal sound to the harrowing power of that one gypsy song. The result is stunning, elevated, haunting.
- WHAT: I Silenti
- WHO: Tcha Limberger (vocals and violin) and the instrumentalists Philippe Thuriot (accordion), Vilmos Csikos (double bass), Simon Leleux (percussion) and Georgi Dobrev (kaval)
- MUSIC: Fabrizio Cassol
- DIRECTION: Lisaboa Houbrechts
- WHERE: Toneelhuis, Antwerpen
- WHEN: Tuesday June 29, 2021 (and next year still on tour in Brussels, Namur, Grenoble, Orléans).
- PHOTOS: Kurt Van der Elst
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