Un soggetto scabroso, un progetto ambizioso: il “Giasone” va alla Scuola Primaria

Lorenzo Bianconi; Silvia Cancedda

doi:10.6092/issn.2039-9715/10178

Authors

Lorenzo Bianconi Università di Bologna

Lorenzo Bianconi is Emeritus Professor of Musical Dramaturgy at Bologna University. He published Music in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1987); with Giorgio Pestelli he edited The History of Italian Opera (3 vols., University of Chicago Press, 1998-2003); with Giuseppina La Face he edited I libretti italiani di G. Fr. Händel (Firenze: Olschki, 1992–). He co-directs the critical edition of Francesco Cavalli’s works, with Ellen Rosand (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2011–). He has co-directed the Italian National Biography since 2012. He was awarded the Dent Medal of the RMA (1983), and is a corresponding member of AMS (1995), of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), and of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2017).
Silvia Cancedda Bologna

Silvia Cancedda graduated in Music from the Department of Music, Art, Dance and Theater of the University of Bologna. She teaches Music Education as specialized teacher at the Primary Schools of the Comprehensive Institute of Pianoro (Bologna). As the teacher in charge of music activities, she has coordinated extra-curricular activities, and organized and directed training programs. She has collaborated with Giorgio Pagannone on research projects on teaching melodrama and published on didactic applications addressed to Primary School teaching, and on opera and instrumental music. She published a Music guide for Primary School teachers (Bologna, Nicola Milano, 2008).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2039-9715/10178

Keywords:

opera comprehension, opera didactics, listening-viewing workshop on opera, fabula, plot, framework, constellation, intuitive reading of music

Abstract

Since 2007, Silvia Cancedda has held five/six-month-long listening workshops in primary schools, focusing on various operas, from Cenerentola to Il trovatore. For the 2017/18 school year, she chose Giasone, by Cicognini and Cavalli (1649). This is an opera that deals with embarrassing themes, and hence apparently not suited for an 8-year-old audience, since it centers on a criminal couple, Giasone and Medea, and on a love triangle in which both women, Medea and Isifile, are single mothers.

The article describes the protocol followed in the workshop. Through language and content adapted to the target age group, the workshop aims at providing a historically sound, accurate description of the opera, as well as adequate comprehension of the work as a whole, through an examination of: (1) the literary sources; (2) the plot structure; (3) the constellation of characters and voices; (4) the system of poetic forms (and the basic elements of metric structures); (5) the system of basic musical forms; (6) the framework of the drama and segmentation of the action; (7) the combination of word/action/music (text, scene, singing). These activities are complemented by a (inasmuch as possible) complete listening-viewing of the work.

Further points that are briefly addressed include: connections with other school subjects, first and foremost linguistic and historical subjects; the origins of the operatic genre; the relationships between the fabula of the myth and the plot of the opera; the system of voices; key scenes; the tools of the poetical metric system. Finally, an intuitive reading of the score is introduced. The effectiveness of the didactic process adopted is documented in the drawings created by the pupils, in photographs and videos.