Il Sangue

In a musical journey through classicism, Il Sangue (Blood) examines the social and political situation around him using the Oedipus complex. Oedipus is bound to face death or, even worse, to face life and the suicide of his mother after having conceived three cursed sons. The great voice of the talented singer Petra Magoni perfectly fit the melodies from the Renaissance, as Pippo Delbono builds the tragedy around his personal history. In this concert between sky and earth, the public can see Sophocles hand in hand with Leonard Cohen, Sinead O’Connor, Fabrizio De André and listen to Ilaria Fantin’s great compositions played with ancient instruments such as the lute or the orpharion.

“Il Sangue” (Blood) is the first step of my work on the great themes of tragedy.

The great themes of the past, which remain the same of the today’s human being, lost and afraid

in its fate of being mortal, condemned to inevitable and inexplicable death.

I saved on my mobile a phrase that a friend sent to me when he was at the deathbed of his mother, taken from the “Prometheus Bound”:

PROMETHEUS: I stopped men thinking of their future deaths.

CHORUS: What cure for this disease did you discover?

PROMETHEUS: Inside their hearts I put blind hope.

Here in “Il Sangue” my work is around the tragedy “Oedipus” by Sophocles.

On one side, Oedipus the King, when he discovers his “black spot”, blinds himself and starts his journey with daughter. And on the other side Oedipus expelled from one land and welcomed by another.

It strikes me to see how originally Theater deal with hidden aspects of human being, even in their merciless monstrosity. A man can kill his father and procreate other children with the mother, however we can always see him through the eyes of compassion.

And then greats themes got confused with those closer to life, to mothers and fathers who left us, to our exiles, to this strange political, social, spiritual time apparently built on certainties but so empty, confused and fragile.

Pippo Delbono