original title:
Hans Werner Henze: la musica, l'amicizia, il gioco
directed by:
editing:
music:
producer:
production:
Red Velvet Media, Luce Cinecittà, with the participation of the Institute 'Cantiere di Musica' of Montepulciano, with the support of Film Commission Regione Campania, Lombardia Film Commission, Toscana Film Commission
distribution:
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2016
film run:
75'
format:
colour
status:
Ready (01/02/2017)
festivals & awards:
This film looks Hans Werner Henze’s life. Henze (1926-2012) was one of the best composer and conductor of the word. A homosexual, member of the Communist party of Italy, Henze was also known for his political convictions. In 1953, Henze moved to Italy. He left Germany out of disappointment, as a reaction against homophobia and the country's general political climate. He remained in Italy for most of his life. This documentary explores his life,and his love and long- lasting and fruitful collaboration with the poet Ingeborg Bachmann. Working with her as librettist, Henze composed the operas Der Prinz von Homburg (1958), based on a text by Heinrich Von Kleist and Der junge Lord (1964). Henze's music has incorporated neo classicism, jazz, the twelve-tone technique, serialism, and some rock or popular music. Living in Italy , Henze's music became considerably more Neapolitan in style. His Five Neapolitan Songs for baritone Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau were written soon after his arrival in Naples. Featuring interviews ,historical repertoire, letters and music, the documentary explores Henze’slife and masterpieces : Boulevard solitude, Prince of Homburg, The joung Lord. The film also includes interwiew with Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Alessio Vlad, Francesco Antonioni, Mario Martone, Paolo Arcà, Roland Boer , Nina di Majo, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, Nuria Nono Schoenberg, Elsa Evangelista, Massimo Lo Jacono . Betta Piccolomini reads “letter from an amity” . Hans Werner Henze and Ingeborg Bachmann met for the first time in the Fall of 1952. Both twenty-six, they were trying to emerge in the artistic milieu of postwar Germany, which was still in ruins. The composer immediately recognised in the young poet a kindred spirit and fellow traveler in his poetic quest: she was trying to say with words what he was trying to say with music. So begins an epistolary exchange that will last more than two decades, marked by pathos, enthusiasm, by a feverish excitement of life and work, and soon by desperation. As if in an elaborate two voice musical composition, every moment of joy, of passion or love, every collaboration, or intellectual exchange between Henze and Bachmann leave a trace in those letters, a much deeper document than the absent-minded tone would often lead us to believe. The letters also lead us through the most important themes of their parallel oeuvres: the hatred for Nazi Germany, the flight to the South, the freedom within Mediterranean nature, splendid isolation and political engagement, an ambivalent relation to success, instinctual violence and the mad joy of beauty, in constant search of an impossible balance between work, life, and love.