M I O
M I S T E R O
N O N
È
P I Ù
C H I U S O
I N
M E,
M I O
B A C I O
S C I O G L I E R À
I L
S I L E N Z I O

(M E L G A C I A N_V A R I A T I O N S
O N_ A_T H E M E_O F_P U C C I N I)

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 23:23] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Excerpts from an informal interview.
Held recently, through an email exchange.

PSP/ How did the idea of including Nessun Dorma in your Variations come about?

OM/ I was talking to some close friends and one of them, not so well informed, asked me why I purposely chose more accessible sound Pieces for the already mentioned Variations. I explained that there is an intrinsic challenge when I decided to act in this way, I would like to embrace this self-defiance of approaching, in a distinctive mode, cultivated themes that have already been obsessively exhausted. A witness to the conversation suggested that we try to point out the most frayed of the classical spawns in general, or, in fact, one of. The hit-of-hits. Of course, the spirit of the chitchat was satirical. And Nessun Dorma immediately came to my mind.

PSP/ And what transformed this picardy into a serious possibility of intervening in Puccini's creation?

OM/ There was a reverse irony in my quote to Giacomo not only because I inly admire his Operas but I have a fantasy, an almost hydrous fetish if I think about this aria from Turandot.

PSP/ Tell us more about this. Just for the record, to everyone who will soon have access to such interview, its about Turandot, Giacomo Puccini's last Opera, composed in three acts, based on a play by Carlo Gozzi with an adaptation by Friedrich von Schiller. It remained unfinished due to the death of the author and was completed by Franco Alfano.

OM/ Bravo.

I will divide it into three layers. I'm referring to melody & harmony, not the libretto by Adami and Simoni (notwithstanding I will invoke the spells - ergo - only as references to you).

The first is the heart of what I will try to describe further below:

´Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, nella tua fredda stanza guardi le stelle che tremano d'amore e di speranza…´

And also

´Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia.´

The second one, sì, moves me viscerally, I admit but in an epic sense and not as mesmerizing as is in my initial mention:

´...sulla tua bocca lo dirò, quando la luce splenderà!´

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´Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!´

The third, extra melodramatic, doesn't magnetize me as much and is probably the core of the ´caricatures´ made of Nessun Dorma through a more exaltative character:

´Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun saprà! No, no...´

´Il nome suo nessun saprà… E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!´

I can vocalize, à la Monsieur Teste, that, sometimes, 'great scenes, angers, passions, tragic moments, far from exalting me, come to me like miserable splinters, as rudimentary states where all nonsense escapes, where being becomes simplified until stupidity; and he drowns rather than swim in the circumstances of the water'.

Even so, I think it's worth underlining that in my ratiocination, at the end of the day, I don't unscrupulously dismember this aria if I return to the original context owing to the fact that I understand, ranging from irresistible lyricism to a proper inflated expressiveness, the necessary Puccinesque fluidity between such [my terms] head / torso / limbs, whilst maintaining the ethos of an impressionist biopsy.

Without sticking to the story that serves as the script for the Opera, I am / we are now in the purely instrumental zone. The opening part I emphasized above always catapulted me into the phantasy of an old vessel, on the high seas, indubitably flowing choreographies across the Big Blue ... at night, under the mantle of a starry sky, and I think of what a sailor - or corsair - who was the protagonist of this panorama ... would sing. [A song of Love, I intuit.] Leading figure, in addition to, surely, the ocean itself and the ship that cuts through it. Without forgetting all marine creatures around them, including imaginary ones. From whales, dolphins, sharks to mermaids, charybdises and leviathans. Maybe not in that order.

A certain harmonic undulation contributes a lot to the state of affairs of my delusions in this niche, the oniric-melodic bewitching superposition ditto. I'm not exaggerating, I would remain adrift (´à deriva´) listening to such a hypnotic fragment for hours and hours....... Transplanting, finally, this ´Melgacian Chimera´ into the anatomy of one of the Variations became an ´incontournable´ (intimate) corollary.

PSP/ Indeed, reflecting on the topic linked to the Seas et cet., it would be possible to say that you have a series of sound Oeuvres that could be called an ´Aquatic Cycle´, don't you think? As is the case with albums, among others, à la ... Klink Symphony, Abyssal Zone, Hy-Brazil, The Ninth Wave, Delphic Delphinus (MELGACIAN Variations on a Theme of BARBER) and Loreley, Loreley, Loreley! (MELGACIAN Variations on a Theme of BRAHMS), is not true?

OM/ ´This freshness exuding from the ocean, the soul gives me back... Oh, salty power! Let's run to the wave to revive! Yes, great sea endowed with delirium, countless idols of the sun, absolute hydra, drunk with blue flesh, that you bite your shining tail in a similar tumult to silence...´ Yes, you noticed very well.

PSP/ If you please, reveal a little more about ´your´ Nessun Dorma. The structure, pretty peculiar details, something like a sui generis Suite?

OM/ I won't try to describe it in minuteness as it would be like a navigation itinerary and I prefer that each listener can give birth to an idisyncratic map, a nautical chart. What has become quintessential for me?

In a random sequence: Develop some liturgical aura when more clearly quoting the ´autochthonic´ melody; enthrone an acoustic (double) bass cause I think it not only looks like a barque but also, made of wood and in such dimension, is the one that, timbrally, comes closest to what the chants & enchantments of a longevous watercraft would be (with that I naturally came up with the inclusion of a drums more jazzistic and thus a metaphor of this great floating body-in-action in all its dynamics and metabolisms); the simulation of unidentifiable voices-in-canticles (will they sound operatic?) symbolizing critters - sometimes natural sometimes supernatural - that live in the lymphs; the ambiguous relationship amid what is likely real and what remains under the custody of metaphysics, videlicet, the proposition of a narrative as the telling of a yarn that also harmonizes factual and legendary; as Turandot takes place in China, include some compositional passage that alluded to such an ancient land and thus, therefore, move betwixt my maritime hallucinations - most of the time - yet also attach allusions to the Puccinian work - here and there, whether by reciting the poetics that constitute the elected aria, either through the simulation of an orchestra tuning to the threshold of the spectacle and so on... -.

PSP/ I confirm Chinese pollens in the second jazzy intervention, still and all, before that, there is a tanpura, a long-necked, plucked, four-stringed instrument arising from India.

OM/ As an Open Sesame!, part of a flooded palindromic silk road, a chronic key to the transfiguraquatic trance.

PSP/ Still on the subject of genius details, it is curious, at a certain point, to hear the words Nessun Dorma (´Let no one sleep´) and, simultaneously, the notes coming from a music box, which sounds like a lullaby.

OM/ Dio e il diavolo vivono nei dettagli.

PSP/ The sound Piece is 23 minutes and 23 seconds long?

OM/ Yes, like a Mirror between two Worlds. That of the surface, that of the deep-self.

PSP/ Crossing the lightness and densities of your multifaceted cosmos, I think it's important to highlight the way you explore noise in your creations.

OM/ Yea, this has been uttered before howbeit it is always welcome to touch on this subject. I will use a quite crystalline instance: Many people relate to music as being made from conventional means. The use of an organ is acceptable as part of this, let's say, universal cliché. However, if I invoke the sound of sea waves, this element is seen as a concrete ´grafting´ or a mention of a visual artifice (teleporting that Opus to the status of a kind of soundtrack) ...e la Nave va. I am aware that all these conjectures are valid and must add to artistic polysemy, nonetheless I demand the condition that the very resonances of the ocean surges are also understood (and especially felt) as being as instrumentalizable as a cymbal, an oboe, a cello or a trombone. Fulfilling the same level of substantiality, form, function; sound-&-sense. This is one of the most phenomenal legacies that the 20th century left us: the ability to germinate into a musical design, with the twin relevant applicability as a piano or flute, the sonority of children playing or the scratched grooves of an old vinyl. We consider harmonic, melodic and rhythmic pulps in this audible ubiquitous miscellany, simultaneously or individually. You know, I have the possibility of setting a pulse with both tambourines and water drops. When contemporary listeners (coprotagonists of the art I erect) realize this and incorporate it, it´s fascinating since the leap (plus, immersive) we take together will be vertiginously plenteous, proliferating.

PSP/ If I can ask Why Nessun Dorma, I ask, a priori, Why Puccini?

OM/ A long time ago, in another interview you did with me, the following inquiry was required: <<Curiosity, any names in the field of Opera?>> And so my reply: <<Allow me to be old-fashioned, with an effectively affective answer: Puccini. De Chirico called out, criticizing, ‘Non gira’ - when he didn’t feel the depth, the relief of the image. Transposing it to music, and despite all of Giacomo's 'deficiencies' (certain ´ariable´ facilities; adoption of librettos that would not be sustained without music, etc.): all in Puccini 'gira'.>> I maintain my point of view, of listening. You know that, among other miscegenable sources, there is Italian blood flowing through my veins as well. And, talking about sacred cows, more than Rossini, Bellini, and even Verdi, Giacomo Puccini was always [following our dampish leitmotif here] the one who knew how to hook me.

PSP/ How?

OM/ ´Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Cosi tra questa
Immensita s’annega il pensier mio:
E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare´.

PSP/ It will come as no surprise to say that I have never heard Variations on Nessun Dorma like the ones you ended up giving birth to. Without any fear of being hyperbolic, nothing comes close to even a shadow of what you did from this aria. In creativity, inventiveness, boldness, depth, diversity, plurality, perplexity, mastery, ingenuity, fluidity ... and there are countless the complimentary terms I could mention. At the coda of this interview, would you like to adjoin any more notes?

OM/ MIO MISTERO, caro amico, NON È PIÙ CHIUSO IN ME." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Turandot premiered at the La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy, on 25 April 1926, a year and five months after Puccini's death. Rosa Raisa played Turandot. Tenors Miguel Fleta and Franco Lo Giudice alternated in the role of Prince Calaf, with Fleta singing the role on opening night. It was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. In the middle of Act III, the orchestra stopped playing. Toscanini turned to the audience and announced, ´Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto´ (´Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro
died´). The curtain was then lowered.

[A reporter for La Stampa recorded the words slightly differently: ´Qui finisce l'opera, rimasta incompiuta per la morte del povero Puccini´ (´Here the opera ends, left incomplete by the death of the poor
Puccini´). Others have reported that Toscanini said ´Here, the Maestro laid down his pen.´ A newspaper report from 1926 states that Puccini asked Toscanini to stop the opera performance in the middle of Act III. The second and subsequent performances of the 1926 La Scala season, as is known, included Franco Alfano's ending.]

There is a rumor that Arturo did not like Alfano's complement. Or would the great maestro have gravely respected the supposed agreement with Giacomo himself? We don't know, but it seems ravishingly touching to me to imagine such remarkable scene! Both the august interruption and Toscanini's ceremonious declaration, demonstrating the solemnity of a royal Requiem!

´Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements´, G.P.'s words. Inspired by the inspiration of Otacílio Melgaço, I will do the same, impeccably equal. Now I ritually interrupt my review natheless, in our case, so that the audible epiphany yclepted ´Mio Mistero Non È Più Chiuso In Me, Mio Bacio Scioglierà Il Silenzio´ can be experienced. Unlike the historical fact above, O.M. is alive and its Variations were duly culminated [´its´: hence by himself]. I will do so out of the very high regard, deference and laudation that I have for an oceanic Work of Art that is so abyssal in me.

Guardi le Stelle, may it be so for You." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - "Nessun dorma" (English: "Let no one sleep") is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot (text by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni) and one of the best-known tenor arias in all opera. It is sung by Calaf, il principe ignoto (the unknown prince), who falls in love at first sight with the beautiful but cold Princess Turandot. Any man who wishes to wed Turandot must first answer her three riddles; if he fails, he will be beheaded. In the aria, Calaf expresses his triumphant assurance that he will win the princess.

Although "Nessun dorma" had long been a staple of operatic recitals, Luciano Pavarotti popularised the piece beyond the opera world in the 1990s following his performance of it for the 1990 FIFA World Cup, which captivated a global audience. Both Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo released singles of the aria, with Pavarotti's reaching number 2 in the UK, and it appeared on the best selling classical album of all time, The Three Tenors in Concert. The Three Tenors, which includes José Carreras, performed the aria at three subsequent FIFA World Cup Finals, in 1994 in Los Angeles, 1998 in Paris, and 2002 in Yokohama. Since 1990, many crossover artists have performed and recorded it. The aria has been sung often in films and on television;

II - In the act before this aria, Calaf has correctly answered the three riddles put to all of Princess Turandot's prospective suitors. Nonetheless, she recoils at the thought of marriage to him. Calaf offers her another chance by challenging her to guess his name by dawn. As he kneels before her, the "Nessun dorma" theme makes a first appearance, to his words, "Il mio nome non sai!" (My name you do not know!). She can execute him if she correctly guesses his name; but if she does not, she must marry him. The cruel and emotionally cold princess then decrees that none of her subjects shall sleep that night until his name is discovered. If they fail, all will be killed.

As the final act opens, it is now night. Calaf is alone in the moonlit palace gardens. In the distance, he hears Turandot's heralds proclaiming her command. His aria begins with an echo of their cry and a reflection on Princess Turandot:

Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d'amore, e di speranza!

None shall sleep! None shall sleep!
Not even you, oh Princess,
in your cold bedroom,
watching the stars
that tremble with love, and with hope!

Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me;
il nome mio nessun saprà!
No, No! Sulla tua bocca,
lo dirò quando la luce splenderà!

But my secret is hidden within me;
no one will know my name!
No, no! On your mouth,
I will say it when the light shines!

Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
il silenzio che ti fa mia!

And my kiss will dissolve
the silence that makes you mine!

Just before the climactic end of the aria, a chorus of women is heard singing in the distance:

Il nome suo nessun saprà,
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!

No one will know his name,
and we will have to, alas, die, die!

Calaf, now certain of victory, sings:

Dilegua, o notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle!
All'alba, vincerò!
Vincerò! Vincerò!

Vanish, o night!
Fade, you stars!
Fade, you stars!
At dawn, I will win!
I will win! I will win!

Just before the extra climactic end of the aria, a chorus of women is heard singing in the distance again:

O sole! Vita! Eternità!
Luce del mondo è amore!

Or sun! Life! Eternity!
Light of the world is love!

Calaf, now certain of glory, sings:

Ride e canta nel sole
L'infinita nostra felicità!
Gloria a te! Gloria a te!

Laugh and sing in the sun
Our infinite happiness!
Glory to you! Glory to you!

In performance, the final "Vincerò!" features a sustained B4, followed by the final note, an A4 sustained even longer—although Puccini's score did not explicitly specify that either note be sustained. In the original score, the B is written as a sixteenth note while the A is a whole note. Both are high notes in the tenor range. The only recording to follow Puccini's score exactly was the first, sung by Gina Cigna and Francesco Merli, conducted by Franco Ghione.

In Alfano's completion of act 3, the "Nessun dorma" theme makes a final triumphal appearance at the end of the opera. The theme also makes a concluding reappearance in Luciano Berio's later completion (this having been an expressed intention of Puccini's), but in a more subdued orchestration;

III - "Nessun dorma" (often in adapted versions of the score) has been performed by many pop and crossover singers and instrumentalists.

The 1989 song "A Love So Beautiful", co-written by Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, borrows the aria's melody.
In what the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences called "the greatest last-second substitution act in Grammy history", Aretha Franklin sang a "soul-infused" version of the aria in place of Luciano Pavarotti when throat problems caused him to withdraw from the 1998 Grammy Awards show.
The 2002 album Warriors of the World by the band Manowar features a version of the aria.
In 2004 Ruggero Scandiuzzi inserts his version in the album Io le canto così (I sing them like this) (Joker, MC 20089).
In 2007, Chris Botti recorded a trumpet version of "Nessun dorma" for his album Italia.
Anohni, lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, recorded the aria with the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta, as part of an advertising campaign for the Italian coffee company Lavazza in 2009.
Jeff Beck's 2010 album, Emotion & Commotion, includes an instrumental version of this aria where the guitar takes the place of the human voice to an orchestral accompaniment.
Jennifer Hudson sang the aria with the New York Philharmonic at the "We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert" in Central Park on August 21, 2021.
The Spanish Band Mägo de Oz made a cover of this song in their album Ira Dei on March 18, 2019;

IV - Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, the music completed by Franco Alfano in 1926 after Puccini's death.

The opera is set in China and follows the Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. In order to win her hand in marriage, a suitor must solve three riddles, with a wrong answer resulting in their execution. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to guess his name before dawn the next day, he will accept death.

Puccini left the opera unfinished at the time of his death in 1924; Franco Alfano completed it in 1926.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.