Alessandro Bosetti: Portrait de voix

– What do you want from me?
–I would like to create a portrait of your voice.
–So it is my portrait?

– No. I believe that you and your voice are not the same.

A family of voices lives its sonic life. A tangle of sounds and emotions, somewhere between Renaissance polyphony and the noise of family life. Voices have no bodies—at least not here. Each is a mother, father, daughter, and sister to one or another.

The family is alternately dissolved and reunited. True dramas unfold between the voices: bonds, separations, friendships, and love…
A cloud of voices, powerful as a storm, brings to life the haunting emotions of an imaginary and magical community.

The portraitist shares this choral narrative with the listener, who finds themselves within an intimate circle—both claustrophobic and nourishing, like every family. The family of voices is torn between rigid role distribution and its unruly, abstract, and fragmented phonetic ratio.

Physical, bodily, and political identities matter little here: only the voices count, resembling souls yet to be assigned an identity, serving as markers of absolute universality.

(Alessandro Bosetti)

Alessandro Bosetti

Neue Vocalsolisten
Johanna Vargas, soprano
Truike van der Poelm, mezzo-soprano
Martin Nagy, tenor
Guillermo Anzorena, baritone
Andreas Fischer, bass
Alessandro Bosetti, portraitist

artwork and design: Canedicoda
mix: Alessandro Bosetti
producer: Giuseppe Ielasi

recorded in Stuttgart, SWR Studio, October 2021 by Fabian Vossler

german portraitist voice recorded in Stuttgart, SWR Studio, October 2021

English and French portraitist voice recorded in Berlin, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Studio, June 2022

KOHLHAAS 2024

Radio play version produced by Deutschlandfunk Kultur

A co-production of GMEM–Centre national de création musicale, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Neue Vocalsolisten, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil–Centre Dramatique National, and La Soufflerie.

With support for the composition of an original musical work from the French Ministry of Culture. Supported by Impuls neue Musik.

Winner of the 2020 Franco-German-Swiss Fund for Contemporary Music, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the Institut français.

premiere: Festival Propagations, Marseille, 15 May 2021

technical sponsor: Fondazione Bonotto
spatial design and programming: Pierre Fleurence
set design: Canedicoda
lighting design: Lucie Delorme
stage: Philippe Boinon