ABSTRACT
Armando Gentilucci, son of the composer, Ottorino Gentilucci, was born in Lecce, and received his early musical education at the Milan Conservatory. There he was taught by Franco Donatoni and Bruno Bettinelli, and took diplomas in the piano, choral music, conducting, and composition. The composers who influenced him are Janácek, Bartók, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Ives, Varèse, Malipiero, and Dallapiccola, and, according to Gentilucci, their music lies outside the two movements indicated by Adorno in that these composers, while sometimes borrowing techniques associated with one or the other movement, also display autonomous characteristics. In fact the whole of the libretto demonstrates an attempt to move away from this world and the present moment in time, to a more ethereal and happier dimension. Gentilucci could not make his vision any clearer -- it is a hopeful, humanist, and almost Utopian vision of mankind moving out of the 'dissonance' of war and tragedy into 'consonance', and singing, at last, harmoniously and in unison.
