Second Life is becoming more and more a virtual stage that fits for promotion and diffusing on the web of music in all its aspects, but :it’s quite unespected that an RL production starts debuting in SL prior to RL. That’s the case of the musical “Odissea”a work by Marco e Massimo Grieco;whose debut will happen before inworld ( May 9th at 12:30 slt, in the land Italia Vera (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Italia%2010%20Milano/19/23/86) followed by the Real Life debut in the summer 2008 . The aim of this performance inworld is to take advantage of SL potential in order to promoting both the RL work and to raise funds for a benefit association A.M.R.E.F.African Medical Research Foundation http://www.amref.it/index.cfm This project actually affects for his smartness so we decided to make some questions to the authors, Marco and Massimo Grieco,who kindly accepted to meet us and reveal what drived them to start this project. Marco and Massimo told me about themeselves and their passions , explaining their concept of musical composition , based on research and experimentation . Their rediscovery of ancient myths together with the love for traveling in the greek lands roused the desire of putting in music the story of Ulysses and his ” nostos” ,a kind of coming back to the common roots of Mediterranean civilisation. The musical is above all a teamwork: behind the scenes many people worked to this project: some international companies have been charged with the developing of the gestures tin order to give naturalness to avatars overacting.Furthermore some of the best sl developers worked to this produstion :the virtual director ”, Dario de Judicibus,the audio supervisor Claudio Crocetti, Franca Olivieri who made the avatars and their costumes, Rolando Ferri PR handler, Jeremy R. Cooper the English translator:to this team it’s necessary to add dozen of people with the task of moving the avatars . It comes spontaneous asking Marco which has been the motivation that caused him to use a pop genre as musical for the stage play of Homer’s masterpiece, wich is one of the cornerstone of western civilisation.He states that the idea is the result of the friendly talk with his brother and Ciro Caravano (of Neri per caso), the three friends have ben taken by the need of both doing a musical and giving voice to a sort of reflection upon Homeric myth:the captivation of human being resides in the never ending contradiction between the strength of his mind and the weakness of his passions:this is the ultimate meaning of Ulysses adventures. The musical panoply of the work draws on a well recognizable leit motif “La Partenza di Telemaco”, and I asked Marco which has been his source of inspiration:” All the flavours, the sensations and emotions -he says- that I felt year after year during my travels all around in Greek islands ,as Itaca and Cefalonia , enriched me with sounds and colors that suddendly became a part of my souls; these boosts joined my personal backgound : in fact, Hyonic Greece musical instruments and its traditional prosody are really so similar to the ones which is possible to find in southern Italy:(”bouzouki” is realy similar to guitar mandolin):it seemed so natural ,for me, to let them flow into music.!” This kind of traditional roots have been the cue for an happy contamination with pop, rap and even rock, in order to incline contemporary audience towards the great Homeric work.This natural and spontaneous plot gave life to arrangements that go back over world music and classical tradition arising a very enjoyable mixing! Actually a musical is not only made by… music so we asked Massimo about which kind of specific work did it require the Odissea’s “mise en scene “. “Rather than isolating single episodes-he answers- we preferred cutting it down through the music in order to evoke the pathos aroused by Odissea. We decided therefore to synthesize the feelings of characters in a few drawings.” At this point I asked the authors about the kind of troubles found in the fullfillment of the project: “Well we had to solve a lot of technical problems,- Massimo says- as the realisation of scenes (as Polyphemos and the monster of Scilla) , the continous changes of setting and the complex interaction between virtual environment and real dancers: the choice has been to keep virtual the set designs in order to let the “real” artists express themselves singing and dancing. ” The enthusiastic way of present their creature explains how it’s been possible for them to gather supports around the project : “Everyone who listened to the musical offered himself completely for this cause, starting from actors, dancers choreographers and so on.”hte authors say. As a last question I asked who are the persons who have helped the most fotr the fullfillment of this project and they answered:”In RL the promoter of Premio Charlot who strongly wanted the performance of Odissea in the archeological area of Paestum (SA) and in SecondLife Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia who decided to host the musical inworld in his lands(Italia Vera). Ulysses story,after 3200 years, is still up to date and it’s definetly able to move deeply and make everyone dream: this is a good reason to wait the debut of “Odissea he musical” even in our Second Life.
Posted by Simona Dawes