MY APOCALYPSE

THE APOCALYPSE OPERA

The Apocalyptic thought and the translation in a positive way becomes soon a mania for the artist,
something like an obsession, almost a reason for living; it’s a complex thinking , that starts but doesn’t
finish.
It’s a bit like the concepts that could live by their own , they automatically continue reproducing and
duplicating until they become irrepressible just in the paintings. To not lose them they are organized
in a script that brings to a musical realization , but that’s not enough for the author in which growing
up the strong desire to bring it on the road, between the people.
 

 APOCALYPSE THE MUSICAL

The characters go out from paintings and become music, dance, play, video installations. Also
in the scene the Apocalypse is happy ending, hope and communion. The spectator, in a timeless
scene, lives the purification itinerary towards the divine.
On the background there are the homeless, who become angels occupied in the battle while
pop-rock music melds with cultured one.
The Apocalypse is painting, imagine, music and goes toward Celestial Jerusalem and finally dj
set where 4 dj’s fight between music, choreography and scenography. The show is divided in
three periods, Vernissage, Musical and dj set that can live by their own too

THE APOCALYPSE : SCRIPT

THE APOCALYPSE IS A HAPPY ENDING

The prophecy on the destiny of humanity is not a catastrophe but a revelation.
The messenger angel came to John the Apostle on the island of Patmos in 95 AD, to show him a heavenly vision of future events, so that he could transcribe them and convey them to the seven churches. And so the evangelist wrote of a rebirth through redemption, a neuralgic path to complete the path of earthly purification and leading to the Celestial Jerusalem, the perfect city made for man in eternal harmony with God. Good and evil, the two sides of the same coin, the positive and the negative contained in each of us, make the Apocalypse an earthly purgatory where man is in continuous conflict between the two natures the belong to him.

CHARACTERS

The Narrator:  

A Virgil of our times who, with an ethereal and almost supernatural air, completely detached from the reality surrounding him,                                                                     accompanies the spectators through the rings of our Apocalypse; he tells of the frustration of the Apostle John due to the poor                                                                             results achieved by his message to the world and his request of being relieved from this task, the narrator acts as a connecting                                                                               point between the thought of the author and the spectator, bringing clarity to the key and salient moments of the performance.                                                                                     In the end, the true nature of the narrating author will be revealed, that of human conscience, a perfect synthesis between mind and spirit.

The Angel:
The new messenger sent to Earth, a modern angel coming from space to bring an old message with a new instrument; he chooses                                                                 painting and the liberal arts as the new vehicle, updated to tell man about his own destiny according to the ancient prophecy of John,                                                       endowing greater vigour to the prophetic writings that have not been understood for too long.

The Tramps:
An example of the suffering on the path of earthly purification towards the Celestial Jerusalem, the tramps are the representatives                                                                               of good, enrolled by the messenger angel to fight against the army of evil on the great day of the final battle (Armageddon).

The Managers:
Example of the evil afflicting our times, the stigmatizing not of money and progress, but of the in-congruous use to which it can be put.                                                                  The managers recruited by the Beast to fight the battle against the angels of God.

The Beast:
In Greek philosophy, a demon, from the Greek “dàimon”, is someone halfway between that which is divine and that which is human,                                                         interfering between the two dimensions. The action takes place in a limbo suspended between Heaven and Earth.

OVERTURE

D. Santanelli / G. Resi / L. Pariota, F. Campanino, P. Campanino / A. Vacca 2015

Narrator intervention 1, John.
Musical Interlude 1.
Video: desert paths

Long white hair falling over his shoulders and the thick, wise beard adorning his face. With undying wisdom, the great old man, with an ethereal air, moves in a supernatural way brandishing a book, which is the testament of human knowledge, and suddenly starts to declaim its contents. He reads and tells, sometimes for himself and sometimes for the others. On the backdrop we see images of arid, sunny roads recalling the Nile area. Completely detached from the reality surrounding him, in his black tunic with pure gold borders, like a Virgil of our time, he guides the spectators through the rings of the Apocalypse to reveal its innermost meaning.

Recital: 

“In 95 AD the messenger angel sent by the Lord reached the Island of Patmos to bring to me in a heavenly vision of the destiny of humanity. I wrote it down and passed in on to mankind through the seven churches. but my prophecy, my, our Apocalypse, after two thousand years has unfortu-nately not yet been understood, the real lost meaning wanders in the darkness of the soul, while the torpor of the mind brings man to the edge of madness. Perhaps I was a true hermeticist, per-haps there were too many metaphors hard to understand, perhaps my pen was truly learned. Or perhaps, due to the Beast, that demon in a halfway place who interferes between the divine and the human, my words reached human thought already corrupt. Or perhaps I just overestimated man and his capacity to come into contact with the divine he carries within him.
But in truth the Apocalypse is now and is in the soul, and represents the eternal choice between good and evil, the polarity of the positive and negative, the two faces of the same coin that dwell together in each of us; there will be no meteorite striking the planet, because the seas invading the cities are sin that assaults the soul, and all the stars falling on the Earth are just your tears, Lord. It is a path of purification in the great spiritual cradle of the Earth, and the Last Judgement is actually just an “individual judgement” that frees the soul to higher levels and belongs to the day of death.

But if humanity hasn't yet understood the happy ending in seeing the road that leads to the Celes-tial Jerusalem, the perfect city made for man in eternal alliance with your harmony, how could my words ever lift the veil from its real and innermost meaning right now, in a time when people read little, and badly? Lord, I am John the Apostle, your faithful follower, witness of what came before and what will come after, and ask your mercy to relieve tired mankind from a burden that has be-come unbearable, to show the new way to charge my scriptures with renewed vigour."

(The actor stops, closes the book, and raising his head, continues)
Thus, the Apostle John invoked almighty God, imploring him to lay the burden on a new messen-ger, an instrument updated to the times and better suited for penetrating where he had failed.
And suddenly the sky became dark and a new world appeared to bring an angel to the Earth, a modern angel, a messenger able to speak clearly and show cause and effect, about the crimes of humanity and the anger of God, the Apocalypse that is already part of our time. An angel sent for the changeover to channels more suited to communicating in our times, able to create “a simple thought”, accessible to all. And so painting, music, dance and the liberal arts in general were cho-sen.

 SCENE ONE
 

Music: Angel-Massive Attack (integration by Piero Campanino).
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video:. Arrival of the angel

00.00–00.15”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Arrival of the angel (Video)
00.15–00.37“Actors disguised as tramps who represent the army of good and actors disguised as managers who wear red gloves, come on-stage from the two opposite sides as if going along par-allel tracks, walking in step and with sudden and sharp changes of direction from the leader to the rhythm of the musical piece, and look as if they are studying one another.
00.38“The Actors of both sides raise their head and look towards the video to follow the events.
01.12“A spaceship appears, bringing the angel near the Earth from the world beyond this one. The angel is shot into the atmosphere as the body of a naked woman falling to the Earth, and in free fall with gravitational acceleration passes through the clouds, perforating them and them landing on the ground with a bump.
02.04“The music and sound effects stop suddenly leaving on the field just a barely perceptible wave, with echoes and dust, while the video images disappears from the screen that goes black.
02.11” On the stage there is only only a spotlight shining on a white sheet on the ground in the mid-dle, under which we can see a human shape, it is the angel. The managers leave the stage with indifference while the tramps, curious, look towards the white sheet.
02.17“The light on the white sheet gets dimmer, while a wind instrument off-stage sounds the mili-tary retreat, dominating the scene, and a white dot emerging from the darkness expands and con-tracts on the video in time with the frequencies of the sound. To get back to Earth, the angel passes through death, which is the point of transfer between the earthly and the unearthly.
03.20“-04.05” The Music resumes from the initial part of the piece by the Massive Attack, and the shape starts to move, awakening from sleep, slowly gain consciousness and slowly sitting up with an almost amoeba-like movement. The tramps come closer.
Musical interlude
04.06”The angel under the sheet stretches out his arms as if spreading his wings and then two tramps, one on each side, grab the opposite sides of the sheet and pull it back, revealing the angel who advances towards the monitor. The angel is there, with back to the public, the lights go out, the video goes black and the angel disappears from the stage to reappear on the video monitors, this time facing the public. The angel moves his mouth slowly, as if the images were arriving de-layed via satellite, as if from another dimension, and we do not hear words, the angel speaks through scripting that appears on the video that says: “Now I will show you the things that will happen”.

 SCENE TWO
 

Music:
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video: Crimes, anger and new carrier

00.00-01.50”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Five actors on stage, dancing and moving their bodies, frame the video that is the pro-tagonist, first showing images of human crimes and natural disasters, and then, the metaphor of cause and effect of Apocalypse. This is followed by scenes showing the actors in convulsive ex-pression of their creative emotions which through painting symbolize the passing over to new com-munications channels to come to the help of writing
Narrator intervention 2, the armies.

Musical interlude 3.
The video image skips as if due to interference, with lines appearing typical of the signal, while a warm light welcomes the appearance of our narrator standing on a stump, with the book open in his hands which he looks at in rapture. He starts to read to the public:
“There are in every man, at all times, two simultaneous postulations, one towards the devil, the other towards God. There are two formations arrayed, one on the evil side and one on the good side, the evil side disguising the obtuseness of the soul, which is more devastating than the force of the passions. Goodness, true goodness, is silent and discrete, often invisible, and has long wings that pick it up every time it falls.”

The narrator, after reading, closes the book and recites:
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads; And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name”. (Apocalypse 13:16-17)

SCENE THREE

Music: Highway to hell, AC/DC
Choreography. A. Vacca
Video: scenes of violence

To the music of the AC/DC, the army of evil comes on stage, consisting of businessmen dressed as managers, typical white-collars, for a performance not intended to stigmatize money and pro-gress, but only the bad use to which they can be put, able to produce pain and loneliness.

00.00–00.23”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  While the video transmits physically and emotionally intense images showing the status typical of places where money rules, a voice off-stage recites the number of the Beast.
00.23-00.34”The managers come on-stage with goose-step (Nazi type). They break ranks and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, they all pull a smart-phone from their pockets so that each one is isolated in his own virtual dimension, chatting, writing, and not even glancing at one another.
00.34–01.17“All together, holding their smart-phones, they just as suddenly start to sing highway to hell.
01.17-01.37”A man dressed as a nuclear technician come in, with mask and radiation symbol, who hands the men cardboard placards with barcodes on them.
01.37–01.53“At this point the managers again sing, this time holding up the placards in their hands.
01.53–03.08” The managers stand in line and march in a column, one behind the other, each turn-ing his own placard around toward the public. There are five of them: the first one of the row shows the placard with “pride” written on the back, while the same word appears in large size on the video (the same placard), the placard initially held up to chest level is raised up after a second un-der the managers chin, and they then sharply tilt their chins downwards. The first man in the row exists the stage, moving quickly against one of the sides as if pulled away by an invisible force, and then turns around, exiting with a natural pace.

This leaves the second man in the row in view and then the others, each of whom displays in order their placards with the words: anger, greed, envy, sloth and the other capital vices, leaving the last one alone on stage, loneliness.
Musical interlude 4

SCENE FOUR

Music: Philadelphia – B. Springsteen (live Simona Bo/arrangement Lino Pariota).
Choreography A. Vacca.
Video: tramps

00.00–00.34”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             The tramps come on-stage a few at a time, walking in a fatigued manner, a little like zombies. Some stop and remain standing, some sit down and some squat, as they pass each other a bottle of Jack Daniels. Some light a cigarette butt they find on the ground.
0034.–00.58“The angel enters and starts to sing while the tramps turn to look at him.
01.00–01.43”The angel starts to embrace the tramps one at a time (in the meantime we hear the voice of B. Springsteen), slowly, with love, some from behind, others on their legs etc.
01.43–02.03”A tramp offers the angel his begging can, the angel turns it over, dropping out the coins in it. The angel blows into the can and puts his fingers in, pulls them out and runs them softly over the tramp's face, leaving an evident streak of paint, a sort of baptism to a new life by which the messenger angel now enrols the men in the army of the Lord in view of the battle of Armageddon, the final clash between good and evil that will take place on Mound Megiddo.
The angel resumes singing.
02.05-03.04”The tramps pass the begging can to each other, now containing the paint, and they put it on by themselves one at a time A sudden jingle of money (introductory part of the subsequent mu-sical piece) frightens the tramps causing them to run away with a scared look and awkward, amoeba-like movements. Some of them hide, others slink under the wall, and some get into their cardboard box-bed with only part of their head out to keep an eye.

   SCENE FIVE

Music: Money–Pink Floyd.
Choreography A. Vacca.
Video: representation of money

00.0 –00.53”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The managers enter holding banknotes, some of them stopping in the middle of the stage, concentrating on phoning, as if they were busily at work. A manager notices the tramp hid-den under the cardboard, approaches him and while he gets out from his cardboard box-bed to escape, the manager jeeringly rains money on him, and the tramp falls to the ground dead.
00.53–01.38“The managers go get the chairs piled up in a corner of the set to arrange them in the middle on a line parallel to the public, with the backs to the public, and improvise a dance with the chair and then sit down. Straddling the chairs and facing the public.
01.40–02.19“Two persons dressed like surgeons come on-stage, with green coats and surgical mask. The managers, with synchronized helicopter-like movement, place their legs over the backs of the chairs with their backs towards the audience, stretch out their legs, pressed together, and with a rigid stance, simulate the position on an operating table. A large green sheet of the type used in operating rooms is laid over the managers by the two surgeons until they are all covered. The two surgeons go under the sheet to operate.
02.1 –02.47”The two doctors first come out from under the sheet, then pull the sheet away. The managers are still seated but with their legs in a normal position, and suddenly, all together, turn their heads towards the spectators, revealing an identical white, anonymous mask. The managers, satisfied, move in a row carrying their chairs to one side of the stage, where they arrange them in such a way as to face the audience, and sit back down to resume their usual business.
Narrator intervention 3, death

The tree stump in a corner of the stage hosts the narrator, our Virgil is there, lit up and once again with a look of rapture over the book, which he holds in his hands. He is visibly concentrating, and then suddenly closes the book with a bang, but this time does not speak. He remains silent, the music stops, and there are no words in the face of death, and the respectful of the sacred nature of this solemn moment. His reflections this time go through a new channel.
00.00-0025”To represent his thoughts, a ballerina comes on stage performing the ”Death of the Swan” but without music. Before death, words give way to silence.
Musical interlude 5.
00.25-0035”The jingling of coins announces the arrival of the managers and the frightened tramps run away while one of them is struck with a handful of banknotes thrown arrogantly by a manager, and falls to the ground dead.
Clear examples of the incongruous management of prosperity and progress highlight the evil of our time, loneliness. Elements created to communicate, paradoxically producing emptiness and isolation. What is social becomes asocial in a world dedicated to the frantic search for success, beauty and eternal youth. Getting lost in the ephemeral and general levelling is inevitable.

SCENE SIX

Music: I miss you – Etta James (live Simona Bo, arrangement Lino Pariota).
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video: funeral cortège and black
T

00.00-00.10”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The tramp is on the ground, lifeless. The indifferent managers are seated as if hypno-tized by the images shown in the video, which are about money, unbridled luxury, the stock ex-change, consumerism and vanity. With series of sharp nodding downwards and moments of ex-treme concentration on their smart-phone.
00.10-02.52”The other tramps come back on-stage and conduct the funeral of their dead compan-ion, in Jazz-funk style. All of this happens while the angel sings the notes of “I miss you”. The video shows “end of broadcast” and goes black by the shrinking of the light field to a white dot which then disappears. The managers exit from the stage carrying their own chairs. A few seconds later the tramps, in the funeral cortège, exit from one side of the stage while the narrator again enters from the opposite side.

narrator intervention 4, the battle.
On the video, the white dot again appears and becomes a bigger light, showing on the screen the view from above of a large, ample meadow, seen as if from a balcony, and its colour shifts from orange, to blue (not true dark), to red and to light blue together with the salient moment of the in-tervention by the narrator.*

Musical interlude 6.
he recites:
“And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Al-mighty. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. Here, good shall finally triumph over evil.”

 SCENE SEVEN

Music: Carmina Burana Primavera – Carl Ort.
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video: scenes of war and animals fighting

00.00-00.23”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The two formations enter and face each other.
00.23-0145” Suddenly the managers grasp their weapons, the smart-phones and as they start to turn towards the tramps, the tramps grasp their weapons fend of the attack, and these are mirrors. The managers see their own reflected image while the video shows flash-back type images, it is a ruthless, sudden interior journey. The men in power are always ready and equipped to combat against anyone, but not against themselves. They are defeated. While the monitors show images of crosses on Mount Golgotha, the managers stretch out their arms to indicate crucifixion, but now everything stops, sounds, lights and movements.
01.45-03.01” The set is almost still, with the tramps on one side brandishing their mirrors and on the other the managers standing with arms stretched out to indicate crucifixion. Out Virgil with

Recites:
“I look at the sky, the Sun and the Moon, the fields and woods, mountains and hills. And don't finish understanding. The eternal paradox of knowing we do not know obsesses my mind in the most an-cient questions: who we are, where we come from, where we will go, what is death. If death is the gate to ascend to the higher levels, is it perhaps a necessary evil? And war: this exalts men, seduces kings and emperors from the start of time, transfers wealth and power. May it also be good, if it is useful to reach the final goal? Life and death, at this point, tend to overlap, and on the basis of this dimensional harmony, we can verify contacts. Man is naturally ready to defend himself, ready to fight against any enemy that appears. But he is unready against himself, and an unexpected look inside himself can lead him elsewhere: introspection is a Charontes who betrays.
The narrator leaves the row, after finishing speaking, closes the book and the defeated managers fall lifeless to the floor.
Musical interlude 7 (soft to introduce the opera)

  SCENE EIGHT

Music: pop-opera piece with two voices (arrangement P. Campanino-L. Pariota).
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video: streets of Philadelphia, tramps

00.00-04.22” The managers lying on the ground, the angel approaches their lifeless bodies, bend over them and starts to daub them with colour one at a time to bring them back to life. the first man-ager resurrect by the angel stands up to sing a musical duet with a lady tramp with pop music meld-ing with an operatic structure.
Musical interlude 8

  SCENE NINE

After his performance, the Manager singing the duet gives the lady tramp a rose and invites here to dance the tango. The two dance in the middle, while the others look on at this communion rite which the descent into the Self to discover the soul has made possible.
Musical interlude 9
Narrator intervention 5, the conscience.
The stump where the narrator usually stands is lit up, and he is there, starting to read out loud.
Recites:
Since neither the Devil nor God reside in money, wealth is a chance, while the devil definitely dwells in poverty. It is the poorness of the spirit that produces true misery. Money can produce immense fortunes or great disasters, it can bring together and tear apart, it can create union or isolation. The obtuseness of thoughts causes us to lose the way, brings in the Beast and trans-forms good into evil, essence into vanity. Since evil is not modern, evil is ancient, the old serpent improperly uses what is modern to serve an improper madness, turning suitable tools into unsuit-able ones, turning embraces into loneliness.
Our narrator now comes down from his pedestal, he admits he is no longer ethereal, almost su-pernatural, completely separated from the surrounding context, but comes onto the stage, and enters into contact. He is not John the Apostle, and he is not Virgil, he is our conscience that talks about itself, coming out of the body to make peace with man.

  SCENE TEN

Music: Bob Dylan, Knocking on heavens doors
Choreography: A. Vacca
Video:

The narrator now becomes the undisputed protagonist, coming onto the stage and taking the floor. He recites, talking about himself in the third person, with his body moving around the stage among the actors, while the guiding soul is sort of suspended in the air. He, too, enters in com-munion with everybody, exchanging the conventional sign of peace with a handshake with the tramps and managers, who in turn exchange handshakes among themselves. The introspection has produced the communion between the managers and tramps, between two apparently distant worlds, but different sides of the same coin. The levelling between good and evil, the convergence between positive and negative in a single collective conscience highlights the merging between mind and spirit. At this point, while the angel performs with his own voice the piece by Bob Dylan (Knocking on heavens doors), the tramps shed their clothes in a metaphorical takeover from the managers who. Promoted to a higher level, put them on. Now they themselves are tramps, and they have come out of their hell, of which they were unaware, to enter into purgatory. The tramps who have shed their clothes proudly display wings that have sprouted from their back. It is the end of the path of purification, they are now ready to fly up to the next ring, the final destination. The narrator has now revealed his identity, he is actually the conscience, which speaking about himself in the third person, and going down among the public he talks about himself, and recites:

“Conscience is actually in each of us, who knows the truth and can distinguish between good and evil, but truth is often put to sleep. It is considered as something that does not actually belong to us, there is the body and there is the soul, and the conscience belongs to the soul, while thoughts remain in the body. It is an often unwelcome guest, a strict judge observing us,, from afar, without any communion. But communion is not taking the sacrament through a host, communion is look-ing inside oneself to promote peace between the mind and spirit. Communion is union with others and with God, union with the divine that is inside us. Communion between body and soul is the only possible way that leads to light and creates the conscience.”

The narrator is now among the public, pulls out the pages of the book he has kept and read throughout the journey to give it to the spectators. The pages are mirrors and he hands them one at a time to the spectators with religious care, and as if they were sacred hosts, and each time he solemnly chants and repeats: “look into yourself”. It is as if he said “the body of Christ”, he is the one giving the sacrament to the faithful, he is the supreme contact with the divine, he is the con-science.
Inside every mirror there is an angel with this sentence: Every page is a mirror, you can look in it and still see nothing, letting it remain just a page, or decide to see.