GIORGIO BATTISTELLI (b.1953): L'imbalsamatore.

Description: "The Embalmer" is a music theatre piece with a single protagonist, a fictional embalmer of Lenin's remains. During the preservative treatment, the character, Miscin, becomes increasingly drunk and utters an increasingly grotesque stream-of-consciousness soliloquy, in which he speaks to, and increasingly identifies with, the corpse. He reflects on the failures of his life; his rivalries with colleagues, his frustrations with his unfaithful and insatiable wife, his fantasies of revenge, commenting on psychological disintegration, but also political and social idolatry, political myth and the impermanence of societal systems. Battistelli's music provides an appropriately surreal backdrop for the drama, looming over the stage in dark, oppressive timbres and harmonies, densely chromatic but far from atonal, with a sense of romantic tragedy, and a parody of it, often based on obsessive ostinato figurations. An effective, strange and rather disturbing work. Italian libretto. Riccardo Massai (actor), Icarus Ensemble; Marco Angius.