The musical work Prometheus. Tragedy of Listening is an innovative and experimental composition: conceived as a series of moving sounds, it dramatizes through music a text created by Massimo Cacciari, derived from a mixture of texts by ancient and contemporary authors, from Aeschylus to Walter Benjamin. For his work, Luigi Nono envisioned an unconventional and flexible set design, an envelope capable of evolving along with the music, itself being part of the creative process.
The set design conceived by Renzo Piano overturned the traditional concept of theater, placing the audience, intended for 400 people, in the central space and placing the orchestra around it, on three different tiers of walkways. In addition, the musicians had to move during the performance, transiting on stairs and catwalks, and the conducting of the orchestra, entrusted to Maestro Abbado, was conducted remotely, with the help of video monitors.
Renzo Piano's interest in music, the "most immaterial architecture that can exist," had occasion to materialize thanks to Luigi Nono, who involved the architect in the staging of his innovative musical opera: Prometheus. Tragedy of Listening.
The architect, who at the time was embarking on the construction of a small boat made of laminated wood, drew precisely on his experience in building boat hulls as well as his musical knowledge, particularly the operation of the soundboxes of stringed instruments.
According to the composer's wishes, Piano conceived a set design that overturned the traditional concept of theater, placing the audience at the center of the stage and positioning the musicians, on several levels, around it. In fact, the architect designed a "hull" with a square base 25 meters on each side, raised from the floor by a system of lattice beams that, bending at right angles, became piers. These supported a lighter metal structure, on three levels, and had side infills composed of thin wooden panels that could be removed or added, to accommodate the reverberation times of sound.
The simple and essential structure was made of glulam and steel and assembled by mechanical joints.
Glulam, a new technology at the time, allowed for the construction of the main ribs supporting the stalls for spectators and the metal structure on balconies, dedicated to the orchestral players.
Large horizontal, vertical, and curved glulam beams, following the pattern of wooden hull structures, supported the entire facility, like a scaffold closed in on itself. A secondary steel structure held the spandrels and supported the perimeter panels, straight or curved as appropriate, which served as a curtain wall and at the same time acted as a sounding board.
Metal supports allowed the elevation of the stalls, leaving a space below for the foyer and bringing the stage space closer to the church vault in order to further improve the acoustics as a whole.
Thus, the structure was not fixed and unchanging, but lent itself to quick disassembly and reassembly in other locations, adapting to the acoustic quality of the space that would house it.
After its debut in the Church of San Lorenzo, the scene was used for staging in one of the warehouses of the Ansaldo plant in Milan for a further series of performances.
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