Commission: Amici del Monumentale

Premiere: Monumental Cemetery of Milan, May 2017

2 parallel compositions: choir of 14 voices and marching brass band of 100 elements 

“A celebratory … historical-literary … and cultural-perceptive experience …  Avital is the right man for this ‘Requiem’: in his score there is the orchestral and choral potency able to spawn new microcosms of life.”
(Luca Pavanel, ilGiornale, Milan, 14 May 2017)

“…an opera far from the other traditional Requiems”
(Corriere della Sera, Milan,14 May 2017)

“He has us accustomed to huge and daring projects … Yuval Avital, young and volcanic composer … gives us a new creation aligned with his anti conventional spirit, drawn to bonds with places and situations able to overcome the distance between spectators and art.”
(Simona Spaventa, LaRepubblica, Rome, 14 May 2017)

Requiem Monumentale is a large-scale new work, commissioned by the Association Friends of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the foremost cemetery. The opera will be performed at different stages in different locations of the city of Milan. The first part was premiered on 14 May 2017 in front of an audience of over 1500 people.

The work is a huge visionary musical fresco set in different locations in the memorial chapel, the surrounding galleries and the cemetery’s avenues, consisting of a three-dimensional sound ambient in which every spectator of any age can create a personal and unique experience.

Between the various microcosms of the Requiem Monumentale, there are highlighted two independent scores - each with a different sonic and performative character - inspired by famous literary figures present in the cemetery: a large choir which interprets the immortal words of Nobel prize Salvatore Quasimodo and a brass band that pays tribute to the complexity of Alessandro Manzoni.

An aspiring art project of great dimensions, it is also an example of social art that unites an entire city. In the compositions, in the sound works and performance, along with numerous musicians are involved many non-musician citizens led by “user-friendly” graphic scores: frescoes of items belonging to the different cultures present in Milan that will participate in the work with sounds and gestures.

Yuval Avital offers an intimate and universal requiem, deep and experiential, a spectacle of sounds, gestures and images that radiate into the graveyard, giving the viewer the ability to move freely in the enveloping soundscape, creating de facto an individual artistic path.

Sample scores - download