Fanny & Alexander is an artistic alliance founded in Ravenna (Italy) in 1992 by Luigi de Angelis and Chiara Lagani. Fanny & Alexander produces events from the cultural fusion of different artistic languages, including theatre, visual arts, music and literature. The Company mainly creates plays, live performances, operas and installations, all drawn from an ever changing network of artists across different disciplines, whose interaction on and off stage gives thought to the relations between tradition and new technologies.
Among their recent and often prize-winners projects are Story of a Friendship, the theatrical version of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, and If this man is Levi, a reenactment of Primo Levi through the remote-acting technique (“eterodirezione”) pioneered by Fanny & Alexander: a live writing device through which the actor receives textual and gestural indications from the console via earphones, in parallel to the entire flow of the show.
Based on “My Brilliant Friend” (“L’Amica geniale”) by Elena Ferrante
The project is based on Elena Ferrante's tetralogy dedicated to the story of two women's friendship (Elena and Lila), following step by step their individual growth, the way they influence each other, their feelings and the conditions of distance and closeness nourishing their relationship through the decades. In the background, the poliphony of Naples, a city torn to shreds by the contradictions of the past, of the present and of a future whose fierce borders still have trouble being defined. On one hand, the sonic and musical score (composed by Luigi De Angelis, with Tempo Reale's sound design) acts as an emotional vehicle, making a ghostly sentimental mapping; on the other hand, the story also becomes a mouthpiece for the concrete universes where the three narrative parts are physically placed: Napoli primarily, but also Florence, Turin and Pisa, where the protagonists live. The show is very rich in sounds: the voices of the two actresses constantly change tone, accent, temperament and the show suddenly turns into choral theatre inhabiting interiors and noisy outdoors.
Concept Chiara Lagani and Luigi De Angelis
Dramaturgy Chiara Lagani
Texts Elena Ferrante (excerpts from “My Brilliant Friend”), Chiara Lagani (excerpts loosely based on Frank Lyman Baum, Toti Scialoja, Wislawa Szymborska)
Sound design Tempo Reale/Damiano Meacci
Video Sara Fgaier
Lyrics Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio
Percussions Cristiano De Fabritiis
Choreographic research and movements Fiorenza Menni
Direction, light design, set design and sound project Luigi De Angelis
Video-polyptych - concert for voice and electronics | installation for seven screens and sound machines.
The Garden is a video installation on seven vertical panels and a concert for theatre or exhibition space.
Halfway between still life, a video in slow motion and a documentary film, this polyptych video is inspired by Florentine painting and by the photography by Andres Serrano.
The video-polyptych creates an immersive sound-and-visual space that invites the spectator to experience the exposure of filmed portraits: contemporary stories of suffering referable to the tradition of the Painful Path. The Garden is inspired by the 14 Stations of the Baroque Passions, rich in pathos and expression.
Luigi De Angelis, with the soprano Claron McFadden and the electronic music composer Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio, holds a musical exhibition with a series of lamentations and musical memories from the past that resemble the theme of suffering, from Monteverdi to Bach, from Nina Simone to Giovanni Legrenzi, passing through Barbara Strozzi and Arvo Pärt. The Garden provides emotional evidence of the suffering of others through the arcings of voice, wrapped in the dimension of contemporary electronic music.
Concept, direction,dramaturgy, videos Luigi De Angelis
Costumes Chiara Lagani
Soprano Claron McFadden
Electronic composition Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio
Sound design Damiano Meacci
Fragrances Integra Fragrances