radio piece in collaboration with Alessandro Bosetti
Co-production France Culture – INA/GRM.
A radio play produced by Alessandro Bosetti and Sébastien Roux, based on Dante Alighieri’s Vita Nova
Production: Lionel Quantin
Voices: Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Manuele Gragnolati, Marie Nedjar, Margaret Zenou, Pauline Ziade.
Project that benefited from a Phonurgia Nova residency / INA-GRM
French translation of Vita Nova by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Éditions Gallimard, collection L’Arbalète
Around 1293, Dante Alighieri wrote Vita Nova, an autobiographical text that alternates poetry and prose, offering the reader a highly personal account of the sublimation of his impossible love for the young Beatrice.
Vita Nova changed the rules of the game in the literature of his time.
The author takes control of the exegesis of his own rhymes, asserts the self-sufficiency of the spoken word in the transformation of an amorous feeling, and chooses to make the journey to transcendence alongside the woman he loves.
In 2017, composers Alessandro Bosetti and Sébastien Roux undertook a sound translation of the text, oscillating between the original version in ‘vulgar’ Italian (1200) and the recent translation by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem (Éditions Gallimard 2007). Working four-handed, they compose every detail of the work, taking up and transforming the text’s literary techniques and stratagems (such as the famous invention of the ‘screen woman’ and the metrical structures) into precise, vibrant musical devices.
Once again, « this collection of fragments of medieval amorous discourse » becomes unstable and invites different readings.