Music Onstage

Abstract

This section is devoted to the renewal of music theater, a problem present in Nono's thinking since the early 1950s, and which came to the forefront following his experience with Intolleranza 1960 (a period during which he wrote a group of texts dedicated to the subject). The realization of a “theater of ideas” and a “theater of situations,” inspired by Sartre, dominates a long phase that embraces the central years of Nono's activity, approximately between 1960 and 1977. Thus, perceptible differences appear, in both the conceptual system and the form of expression, between the thoughts expressed in the 1980s in “Toward Prometeo” and Nono's earlier writings. These are indicative of the profound metamorphosis that his thoughts on musical dramaturgy underwent during those years.