The Lady in the Moonlight by Yorgos Sicilianos - A Look At The Composer’s Workshop (II)

Abstract or Summary:

Yorgos Sicilianos composed his melodrama ‘The Moonlight Lady’, Op. 41, for mezzo-soprano, narrator, clarinet, viola, and guitar between 1976 and 1977. Shortly after completing this chamber version, he created a new version for a full orchestra. This work is based on Yannis Ritsos’ one-act play ‘The Moonlight Sonata’, a long monologue where “a woman of a certain age dressed in black” addresses a silent young man. The monologue explores themes of “time and degeneration”, mixing memories, unfulfilled desires, and dreams in a tone that varies from contemplative and melancholic to bitter and sarcastic, erotic, and lyrical.

The entire scene is presented by an anonymous narrator who, just before the end, reveals that the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata has been playing in the background throughout the woman’s monologue. Sicilianos writes about this text: “[…] The Moonlight Sonata was for me a surprise and a challenge from the very first moment: a surprise […] because the poet manages to tell an ordinary sentimental story while building a continuous theatrical flow full of inner meanings that go beyond the word and the myth – and a challenge because the musical phrase from Beethoven’s Sonata for piano in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No 2, which Ritsos uses here as an excuse, could provide a music-theatre piece […] with the expressive dimension that, willingly or unwillingly, the poet intended from the beginning”.

The composer’s aesthetic intention is clear: Sicilianos proposes a musical reinterpretation of Ritsos’ poetic text using musical means, a fundamentally romantic approach. Sicilianos’ extensive notes on his volume of Ritsos’ poetry, preserved in his archives, reveal how meticulously he studied the text and provide a glimpse into his compositional process during the early stages of his work on the piece. By examining these notes, we can trace Sicilianos’ search for the inner musicality of each of Ritsos’ verses and his initial interpretive decisions that shaped his later work. From the beginning, he highlights the expressive character of the poetic text, choosing a ‘parlato’ rendition for groups of verses composed of brief, crisp phrases, and a ‘cantato’ rendition for more lyrical sections.