Al gran sole carico d'amore (In the Bright Sunshine Heavy with Love) is an opera (designated as an 'azione scenica') with music by Luigi Nono, based mainly on plays by Bertolt Brecht, but also incorporating texts of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Nono himself and Yuri Lyubimov wrote the libretto. It premiered at the Teatro alla Scala on 4 April 1975, conducted by Claudio Abbado. Lyubimov directed the original production. The UK premiere was at the 32nd Edinburgh Festival in 1978. In addition to vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra, the work incorporates taped sounds. This work is a product of Nono's strong political activism through the mid-1970s.

Roles

Synopsis

The story is without conventional linear narrative, and comments in its two parts on the 1871 Paris Commune and the 1905 Russian Revolution. The principal characters are women from those periods, who perish in an attempt to stop the violence of their times.

Recordings