Music Theatre
Faust, Alberta
Faust, Alberta is an operatic spectacle that offers a contemporary, metaphysical take on the Faustian myth. Its only protagonist is a Nameless Man, who finds himself in a remote shelter, by a lakeside, surrounded by frozen snowfields. He cannot remember who he us, nor where he is from. The only thing he can remember is that he is on the run with a girl whose name he has forgotten, and that they have been pursued by Mr M, an unforgiving relentless bounty hunter who is after them, an unstoppable diabolical machine.
Even you, lights, cannot hear me
Exploring a futuristic and elegiac vision of the end of time, Even you, lights, cannot hear me is a new operatic spectacle based on a monologue from Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. Two singers, depicted as two beings embodied into one entity, wander a surreal, yet exquisite cosmos, in which nothingness and wholeness coexist, timelessly. Composed by award-winning artist Simone Spagnolo, this work originally arises from a concept by Simone Spagnolo and Dimitry Devdariani, with the wish to give a whole new life to Chekhov’s powerful writing, whilst challenging the contemporary notion of opera and music-theatre.
Mr Baldocci
Mr Baldocci is a new music-theatre spectacle for acting pianist, answerphone machine, stereo, and stage props by Simone Spagnolo. Constellated by a multitude of musical memories, fragments, citations, and interrupted beginnings sourced from the cultivated and popular past, Mr Baldocci portrays a nameless man looking for his own identity, which ultimately reveals to be manifold and inconsistent. Memories, fragments and citations, through poly-stylistic interweaving, draw from collective and individual musical memories to eventually capture a liquid identity, forming a metaphorical representation of our contemporary post-truth condition.
It Makes No Difference
A Narrator, a book, toy-balls, a knife and a gun, common people and infiltrators: It Makes No Difference is an operatic spectacle that articulates through patterns of non-linearity and multi-narrative, whilst playing with dramaturgical and mnemonic implications. The libretto is composed by extracts taken from Calvino, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Goethe, newspapers, and other narrative and academic sources.
All Rest
Specially commissioned for 2024 St Mary’s Music Festival, All Rest offers an itinerant, site-specific performance portraying a fictional dreamscape about the people dwelling in St Mary’s the Virgin, Wanstead. Six characters and a chorus of ghosts take the audience on a journey through the grounds, the graveyard and the church of St Mary’s, offering a glimpse of past and future images, as well as individual and shared moments.
Touch-less
Touch-less comprises four graphic scores, respectively printed on the four sides of two giant gloves to be worn by the performer. This composition reflects on the idea of music score as a wearable theatrical prop; an idea that wishes to both envisage theatrical gestures as the outgrowth of music notation and epitomise the intangibility of music by means of 'ostented' dramaturgical objects. This work aims to provide a musico-theatrical synthesis able to merge text, music, theatre and design into a ‘score-prop’.
Told By You
Told By You is an open score for three string ensembles, three soloists, a narrator and audience narrative participation. This piece is the fruit of a collaboration between composer Simone Spagnolo, director Helen Eastman, conductor and Head of Strings at Trinity Laban Conservatoire Nicholas Pendlebury, and Trinity Laban String Ensemble. Told By You was developed and performed as part of CoLab, at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, in February 2013.
#HiddenSpaces15
Commissioned by Dance Ahead, and created in collaboration with choreographers Zoë Leigh Gadd and Adam Russell, Virgin Trains, University of Cumbria and funded by the Arts Council England, #HiddenSpaces15 was an immersive theatre performances beneath Carlisle Railway Station, in the Undercroft. Simone's music included both instrumental music and pre-recorded soundscapes. These took place simultaneously in multiple locations, interweaving, accompanying the audience immersive journey.
Loops Theatre Project
Loops’ Theatre Project was born from a collaboration between composer Simone Spagnolo and digital technologist Michele Panegrossi. The project was origiunally commosioned for a special performance presented at Campania Eco Festival, Italy.
Ballets
Simone Spagnolo has composed music for seven ballets which have been performed in venues and festivals such as Edinburgh Fringe, The Shunt, Cloud Dance Festival, and Bonnie Bird Theatre, among others. Choreographers Simone has worked with include Paola Di Bella, Zoe Gadd, Laura Galioto, Danielle Griffin, and Eleonora Pennacchini.
Harp Works
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Simone Spagnolo has collaborated with numerous harpists, developing a rich repertoire of works for solo harp and harp ensembles which have been performed globally by numerous musicians. Harpists that have performed Spagnolo's compositions include internationally renown performers such as Gabriella Dall'Olio, Giulia Rettore, Maria Chiossi, Clara Gatti Comini, Maria McNamee, Francesca Tirale, and Liana Perillo, just to name a few. Spagnolo's harp works are mostly scored for unusual, yet eclectic instrumental combinations, offering original sonic contexts and expanding the harp repertoire. Examples include Gimnopedia Rapsodica, for piccolo, flute, celesta, two harps and speaking voice, and the musical action La Confessione di Yoshiko Shioda, for flute, bassoon, harp, and pre-recorded voice.
Albums / composed
Music for chamber ensembles with harps - Published by Da Vinci Calssics
Closure movie soundtrack
Silenzio single album for prepared harp
Live and Library music for Viola and Violoncello
soundtrack for Mir Faberge' iPad App
Album by pianist Gabriele Baldocci. Innuendo Transcription by Simone Spagnolo
Ballet for three pianos and electronics
for Two Vibraphones
for Solo Violin
Ellittico, for violin, clarinet and piano. To be released in 2020
Albums / curated
A collection of Borges-inspired works for solo violin curated by Simone Spagnolo.
A collection of compositions by London College of Music Masters students for string ensemble and digital sounds curated by Simone Spagnolo
Soundtracks
Closure, a film by Enrico Poli
Closure is a modern drama in a contemporary time, where the space of feelings becomes undefined, and a sense of emptiness surrounds us.
The Ottoman Love Affair, a film directed by Marcus Werner Hed
A short film bringing to life the true story of a secret love affair, charted through a series of Fabergé cigarette cases used to discretely pass the messages of love
Portraits
photo by Gabro
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Theo Albanis
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Alisa Boanta
photo by Theo Albanis
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Theo Albanis
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Gabro
photo by Mirko de Nicolo'
photo by Theo Albanis