CONTENT

Welcome 1
The Music Theatre NOW Network 4
The Meeting 5
Jury 7
“Music Theatre NOW - Global Tendencies and Perspectives” by Prof. Dr. David Roesner 10

The Selected Works 20

Coup Fatal 21
Il Ballo delle Ingrate 25
Invisible Cities 29
L.I. | Lingua Imperii - violenta la forza del morso che la ammutoliva 33
Musicophilia 37
Paradise Interrupted 41
Private View 45
Serie Opera III - Salomé 49
Shifting Ground 53
Slumberland 57
The Queen without a Country 61
The Source 65
Два акта / Two Acts 69
Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists 73

Special Mention 78
Cachafaz, tragedia bárbara 79
Comfort Ye 83
Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli / Ribald Flowersong 87
你是我的孤独 / You Are My Loneliness 91

Imprint 95
Shifting Ground has been has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding
and advisory body; supported through Creative Victoria and developed through Arts House CultureLAB.
 Xochicuicatl
cuecuechtli / The plot of Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli developed
out of an erotic reinterpretation of the concept

Ribald Flowersong
“cuecuechcuicatl” [playful ribald] and the
expressive whole it embodies of song, poetry,
music and dance, whereby sexuality represents
a source of philosophical-existential depth. It
premiered under music and stage director Jose

ABOUT
Navarro-Noriega, who is renowned for his

F or almost five centuries, historians and specialists

thought that indigenous Mexican music theatre had been
completely destroyed by the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Some
chroniclers reported that this rich tradition was fully absorbed by
and transformed into Christian theatre pieces during the religious
conquest of Mexico, which imposed European models. It was
only a few decades ago when historian Miguel Leon-Portilla
and even more recently anthropologist and linguist Patrick
Johansson began a systematic research effort to prove that one
text, entitled Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli (Ribald Flowersong),
interdisciplinary scenic work as well as for his
unique collection of native Mexican instruments.
Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli is comprised of
twenty-eight scenic farames, with six characters
performed by five performers (who follow their
own score, which includes lyrics, vocalization
gestures, and dancing steps), and twenty
musicians on stage playing over the course of
one hour.

87 was in fact an original example of the Mexican music theatre

genre “cuecuech” [ribald-sacred] from the pre-Columbian era.
Mexican composer, historian and musicologist Gabriel Pareyon
devoted ten years to uncovering the subtleties of this poem as
a dramatic plot and composing a musical score in Nahuatl (the
language of the Aztec-Mexica people) with instruments and
vocal inflections native to Mexico. This is the first work in this
native style since the defeat of emperor Montezuma in 1520.
JURY STATEMENT