Libretto: the Cities

A City and memories: Zaira

As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all its past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, … 

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A City and signs: Ipazia

Of all the changes of language a traveller in distant lands must face, none equals that which awaits him in the city of Ipazia, because the change regards not words, but things.[...] The philosopher was seated on the lawn. He said: “Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know”. [...]  I realised I had to free myself from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought, only then I would succeed in understanding the language of Ipazia. [...] My spirit wants no stimulus or nourishment save music. [...] There is no language without deceit.

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A City and desire: Anastasia

[…]But with all this, I would not be telling you the city's true essence; for while the description of Anastasia awakens desires one at a time only to force you to stifle them, when you are in the heart of Anastasia one morning your desires waken all at once and surround you. The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. […] your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia when you are only its slave.   

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A trading City: Ersilia

In Ersilia, to establish the relationship that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black and white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain. […] Spider-webs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

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When he enters the territory of which Eutropia is the capital, the traveller sees not one city but many, of equal size and not unlike one another, scattered over a vast, rolling plateau. Eutropia is not one, but all these cities; only one is inhabited at a time, the others are empty; and the process is carried out in rotation. […] On the day when Eutropia's inhabitants feel the grip of weariness and no one can bear any longer his job, his relatives, his life […] the whole citizenry decides to move to the next city, which is there waiting for them, empty and good as new; there each will take up a new job, a different wife, and will spend his time with different pastimes. […] Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chessboard. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the actors changed. 

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A City and the sky: Thekla

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwlks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long bruses up and down, as they answer "So that it's destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city." […] "What meaning does your construction have? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?" […] Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.

 

Continue exploring: A Play of Signs | Background and Commentary | Libretto: Introduction | Libretto: Credits.