2005, In: Italian Studies.60, 1, p. 71-98
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/its.2005.60.1.71
Abstract
Dallapiccola's full-length, dodecaphonic opera, Ulisse, was composed over a period of eight years (1960–68), and was intended as a summation of his entire, previous work. The libretto draws not only on Homer's Odyssey and Dante's presentation of Ulysses in The Divine Comedy, but also on a plethora of other writers of varied nationality and ranging from the classical to the modern age: Aeschylus, Hölderlin, Tennyson, Cavafy, Pascoli, Machado, Mann, and Joyce. This article explains how and why references to these writers are torn from their original contexts and skillfully woven into the Ulysses story to underscore Dallapiccola's personal and Christian interpretation of the myth of Ulysses, who, in the opera, posits only communion with God as an answer to the existential problems of modern living.
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