• Colm Tóibín. "Being homosexual is a way of being stateless"

In the common areas of the Fiumicino airport in Rome, there are a number of pianos available to passengers for anyone who wants to touch them. So, when you go to your boarding gate, anything can be floating in the air, from the public address, always squeaky and invasive, to a pop melody or a Chopin mazurca. But sometimes the coincidences reach an almost cosmic dimension, and while we go to the access that will lead us to Palermo, a young man runs with good right hand - the left not so much - the expansive arpeggios of Nuvole bianche , one of the composer's most famous pieces Ludovico Einaudi.

Hours later, already in the facilities of the monumental Sicilian Massimo Theater, I explain the anecdote to Einaudi himself, and his gesture is flattering and of natural acceptance. Coincidence was not expected, but it is not surprising that it happened. That melody, like so many others of its own on a different scale, has been reproduced more than 165 million times on Spotify - statistically speaking, four times more than what is known from Mozart or Beethoven's best known on that platform - and it is thanks to parameters such as these by which it is easy to draw the conclusion that we are before the composer - according to Western tradition - most heard of our time.

But what has brought Einaudi to Palermo is not its repertoire of famous melodies and aerial textures, but a project of greater depth and a deeper moral dimension. In 2017 he was commissioned to compose an opera - the first in his already long career - and this week is premiering after two hard years of work in which he has also continued his long world tours and theater projects in Paris with Robert Wilson and Isabelle Huppert Last Friday, the first of the four functions scheduled in Palermo was held until October 8, and there will be a second round starting next March 10 in Naples. It is titled Winter Journey and addresses in a lyrical way one of the central problems of our Europe in crisis , that of immigration that crosses the Mediterranean, playing life in the face or cross, the political problem that arises and, above all, human drama that is behind each of the individual stories of those who manage to reach a coast or drown halfway in the sea.

"It's a complicated problem," says Einaudi, "and dramatic situations are emerging that have to be resolved. I don't know how this is resolved, I wish I knew, but what it is is one of those issues, such as climate change, that you can't miss: they force you as a society to stop and focus on them. " The commission of the Massimo Theater came to Einaudi with a clear intention: to address the issue from the perspective of art and civic commitment .

Not surprisingly, the Palermo opera - whose general director is the veteran mayor Leoluca Orlando, famous for decades to stand up to the mafia and, recently, for opposing the harsh immigration restrictions of the former Salvin government - has distinguished himself as a popular institution, progressive and contrary to presenting opera as an entertainment of the establishment . "I know that an opera will not solve the problem, this is a task for politicians," Einaudi continues, "but the mission of art is to propose a reflection of things. Politics will never approach the problem in its spiritual dimension, but we if we can do".

When Einaudi says us, he also refers to Roberto Andò, the stage director who has imagined the visual representation of Winter Journey - with corpses on the edge of the stage, simulating a beach turned into a cemetery, and the simultaneous use of video and real action -, and especially to the Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, who has written the libretto, in which it is also his first foray into the genre that Lorenzo da Ponte, Hugo von Hofmannstahl or Pietro Metastasio once dominated.

"If you are a writer today, it is difficult to avoid the issue of migration," explains Tóibín. "I already dealt with it in my Brooklyn novel, and it is increasingly becoming a central issue. Everything revolves around the prejudice we feel towards those who come from outside. So, the more images we create to question this prejudice, and provide human complexity to those who are arriving in Europe, the better. " Tóibín and Einaudi strongly agree on one point, expressed by the composer: "When accepting such an assignment, you don't think about the artistic challenge, but about the responsibility you have as a citizen. For me, doing this opera was, first and foremost , a moral requirement. "

Winter Journey explains the story of three immigrants, a man, a woman and a young man, in a city of coastal and undetermined Europe, which could be Lampedusa, Algeciras or Marseille. They do not know each other, although the action will gradually approach them, and their personal stories will be intertwined, united by the danger of the trip and the difficulty of adapting to a new reality that, in the first instance, is always hostile, but in the sooner or later windows open to hope. "The title Winter journey is a reference to Schubert's Winterreise , of course," admits Tóibín. "But unlike the melancholic journey that Schubert narrates, today's winter trips are made in a state of panic . There is the irony of the title."

The work process between composer and librettist has been at a distance and relying on the skills of the other. Tóibín proposed a first draft structured in short scenes - vignettes of anguish, inspired by the Greek tragedy and with a phrase from the Sophocles Antigone as a starting point: "Of all the wonders, none is as admirable as man" - , and left the text open for Einaudi to do with him what he wanted, apt to be sung.

Finally, Einaudi has preferred to leave the text as a declaration - in his opera he only sings the choir or some African voices that symbolize the situation of uprooting the characters - and he has dressed each of the scenic paintings with his characteristic lyrical style, writing this time for a large orchestra formed by a section of strings, metals, piano and harp, but without wind instruments to, in his own words, " avoid the epic and focus on pain ; metals have a dramatic function such as, for example , it happens in Mozart's Requiem . There is something religious. This opera is a kind of prayer for Europe. " Or as one line of the script says, "this is the sound of the cry of Europe."

The future journey of Winter Journey is not yet known. After the performances scheduled in Naples in 2020, the opera will have to wait for the interest of new theaters to manifest. But everything seems to intuit that he will have a long life: Einaudi's fame and his friendly style - his composition is far from the harsh atonality of contemporary operas - would have to attract the attention of a wide audience, and the central theme should open doors in institutions interested in being a speaker of social causes. For now, it has already turned out to be subversive enough to be released in Italy , the country that together with Hungary has done more to rise as a retaining wall for migratory flows caused by war or poverty.

"This is a serious problem also in Ireland," says Tóibín. " No political party is working to appease the fear of the people , and that translates into a regulation of the refugee issue that ends up being punitive and shameful. And it is a topic that is not talked about because the press hides it. In Italy: our idea of ​​Italy is that of an open and friendly country, and that is why the unpleasant reaction of Italians to immigration makes this whole thing much more disconcerting. "

"When talking about immigration in Europe, politicians reduce the issue to simple numbers," Einaudi concludes. "Immigrants are mere statistics of the dead, or deported ... It is spoken without any human involvement. So our approach is the opposite, and Winter Journey is a story of specific people, in a specific place, so that it can emerge our humanity and get excited about history. " Or, put another way, an opera may not change the world, but it can change a person . And just for that it will have been worth it.

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