The manuscript, existing in several versions, has been revised by Maestro Mario Iannelli, expert connoisseur of all Vittorio Gnecchi’s music.
Forty years of work
Gnecchi’s last masterpiece, Judith, which is also the last text written by Illica, was reworked for forty years by Gnecchi before seeing the stage in the 1952 performance in Salzburg, in concert form but drastically mutilated. It is a dramatic oratorio of enormous scope, containing musical pages of undoubted value, surprising for their modernity, which Gnecchi anticipated in the period between the two wars and chiseled afterwards, until his death.
After Cassandra, the friendship between Vittorio Gnecchi and Luigi Illica continued throughout his life: he remained an ardent supporter both at the time of the writing of Cassandra, and during the rehearsals of the performance in Bologna, in 1905, under the direction of Toscanini. Even four years later, when the famous Cassandra-Elektra case broke out, Illica was one of the few Italians who remained at the side of the Milanese composer, when the doors of Italian theaters were closed to him.
About ten years have passed since the premiere of Cassandra, and the two artists find themselves working together again, this time on an oratorio with a subject taken from the fourth book of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, Judith, a famous subject that has interested composers of every century, from Vivaldi to Mozart, up to Honegger in the last century. As for Gnecchi the work will see the light only forty years later. Gnecchi, in fact, prolonged its conclusion: begun during the First World War, the work was completed after the end of the Second Conflict.
A symphonic excerpt of great musical value was performed at La Scala in 1932 conducted by Mengelberg. The premiere of Judith (in reduced form) took place only on December 16, 1952, (ironically) right in the exclusive temple of Richard Strauss, the Festspielhaus of Salzburg. Three acts of colossal dimensions are reflected in an epic libretto in which Illica often indulges in unbridled lyricism. The portrayal of the characters and their psychology blends with a setting that is as imaginary as it is lucidly perceptible and real.
The spaces are described not only by diegetic captions, but by the very presence of choral masses with heroic accents. The dramatic elements clash with moments of profound love poetry, in the tragic fresco of the war between the Assyrians and the Bethulians, in which the plot of the impetuous and impossible love of Joel and Judith is woven, culminating in the desperate and glorious death of Joel in her arms - with definite reminiscences of Wagner's Tristan.
After a first choral and violent act, in which the battle on the walls of Bethulia takes place, ending with their collapse and the appearance of Holopherne, the action focuses on the key figure of Judith. A tragic character, a heroine transfigured into an avenging angel filled with love. Around her revolves an essentially male human theater, that conceals the weakness of those who can not live without love, human or divine.
In the second and then in the third act Judith's sacrifice turns into revenge and then salvific victory for her people. Those around her reveal their more fallible side. Holopherne, too, is shown not as the monster described in the pages of the Bible, but as a man in love and moved by deep passion: the most touching scene si that in which he gets drunk by drinking from the same goblet as Judith, resting his lips on the mark left by her lips, a gesture at once sensual and pure, the one and only moment in which their love is consummated.
The monumental orchestration - the stylistic feature of Vittorio Gnecchi's work - painting this grandiose fresco with exalting colors. Each timbre becomes a symbol and a scenic space, each theme moves away from the personification of the leitmotiv, to incarnate itself in a new narrative psychography. The actions follow each other unceasingly, the music branches out in a thousand melodic rivulets to draw a score that seems to summarize all the musical experiences of his century.
Judith - Parte 1
Judith - Parte 2
