A new work commissioned by the Greek National Opera to Nicolas Tzortzis

"He found nothing eternally founded to lean on. Everything was carried away by earthquakes, by tremors deep in the core. There is no earth, everything is an impermanent wave."

N. W. Pentzikis, The Dead Man and the Resurrection (1938)

In "The Dead Man and the Resurrection", N. W. Pentzikis offers Greek literature a milestone work, as he differentiates and develops the technique of the interior monologue, inspired, among other, by Virginia Wolf, James Joyce and French Symbolism. He often abolishes any logical consistency, but he nevertheless arrives at emotional results, with a memory that permanently oscillates between past and present.

The book, partially autobiographical, describes the journey of a young man towards suicide, due to an ill-fated love. Starting with dark, urban images of poverty and social disintegration, reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, the author follows the main character as he descents into hell, only to come out of it eventually. The end of the book is an ode to Nature, the resurrection being associated with a celebration of mostly rural landscapes, carrying an emotional, ecological message.

Based on Pentzikis's book, we want to stage a performance which, starting from the text, its inherent musicality, and the logic of the internal monologue, will function as a journey, from a completely urban soundscape to a completely natural one. In between, the work will be a wandering through a labyrinth of associative ramifications in which each member of the audience will be invited to chart their own path and draw their own conclusions.

The music will be in a state of constant flux, a constant transformation that will explore the timbres and possibilities of the ensemble and electronics. Different writings and harmonies will be incessantly pursued, each penetrating the logic of the other to create situations often dual or hybrid, vague or ambiguous, and other times fleetingly clear.

The logic of the internal monologue applied to the music will aim at a seamless musical text, where opposing elements will coexist, and conflicting musical entities will offer multiple possibilities for dramatic development. At the same time, the music will accompany the performers in a way that makes the listening active, sometimes anticipating the continuity of the text, sometimes recalling elements already heard, thus coloring each moment in a unique way.

The ensemble will consist of musicians capable of playing more than one instruments, moving from the Baroque to the modern era and vice versa, from the purely acoustic to the fully electric sound, thus highlighting the spirit of Pentzikis, who was constantly between past and present, the Byzantine East and the European West.