the parallel texts (but not biological) of a Catholic and a homosexual jew pantheist
"Death in Venice" by Benjamin Britten in Milan and Rome to Gustav Mahler's Ninth
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• Who has had the good fortune to grasp the connection on the evening of March 5 heard at La Scala in Milan "Death in Venice "by Benjamin Britten (until March 19 replicates) and the afternoon of March 6 Gustav Mahler's Ninth Conciliazione Auditorium in Rome (it was replicated on 6 April 2 to 5 but you can listen to the Academy Nazionale di Santa Cecilia). There is a very strong linkage between the two jobs: they are two heads of two key players to understand the twentieth century. Were conceived and composed when the two authors knew they were, while still young, suffering from severe heart failure that soon would take them to the grave. There were two excellent performances: the work of Britten came to La Scala in a production co-produced with the Inglese National Opera for four years already excited about the European public, while Mahler's Ninth, conducted by Francesco La Vecchia, was a 'further proof of how the Young Symphony Orchestra of Rome you compete well with more complex Europe.
In reviews and comments, however, few have grasped the link between the two testaments. Non-organic, of course, since Britten and Mahler looked much farther when he was about the end of their lives mortality. Britten was the official composer of the English Court (a Court not Protestant but no less bigoted: in those years, the British censors had banned the staging of a "View from the Bridge" by Arthur Miller on the grounds that he misled the young people taking them on the path of homosexuality). Britten was an awkward, as a practicing Catholic who lived from the age of 23 years with the tenor Peter Pears, to whom "Death in Venice" is dedicated as the ultimate gift of love. In his interpretation of the novella by Thomas Mann is not the central homoerotic attraction in the film version made in those years by Luchino Visconti. The central theme is the intellectual contrition for what he could do but did not do, along with the sense of youth and beauty lost and which can no longer communicate. The death comes on the Lido beach and the sea runs to the youth. An end of "different", but still Catholic.
Mahler had converted to Catholicism in full regalia, but do not really believe it, and an opportunist with one goal: to become the leader of that work instead of Vienna, which gave him much trouble and bitterness to accelerate the disease. He was a jew not a believer that, after much suffering from theater director (as well as personal stories and family), it is closer to pantheism Zen (formerly toccato nella Terza sinfonia). Nella Nona ascoltata all’Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione, lo si avverte quando dopo i primi tre movimenti (un rimpianto per la giovinezza non distante da quello di Britten) si scivola nell’adagio del quarto che trasuda di amore per la terra e per la natura. Mentre Britten guarda al Cielo, Mahler si ricongiunge, con serenità zen, ai grumi delle terra e della vegetazione da cui pensa di essere venuto.
© - FOGLIO QUOTIDIANO
di Giuseppe Pennisi
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