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Music Theatre

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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#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.

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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.

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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.

> List of Works for/with Harp
> Harp Works published by Universal Edition 

Albums / composed

Albums / curated

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.

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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

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Portraits

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