Masbedo Perform Live with Orchestra for Szymanowski's Król Roger at Rome's Santa Cecilia

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia opens its symphonic season with Karol Szymanowski's 1924 opera Król Roger (King Roger), conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano. The production, part of the Romaeuropa Festival on October 5, 7, and 9, 2017, at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, features the artist duo Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza, born 1973, and Iacopo Bedogni, born 1970) performing live on stage for the first time. Instead of working behind the scenes, they engage in a visual-musical jam session with the orchestra, manipulating objects in real time and interacting with musicians' and singers' movements. The opera, set in Palermo at the court of King Roger II, premiered in Warsaw in 1926 and was revived in the 1980s. Pappano previously conducted the work in 2015 in Boston. Masbedo describe their intervention as three distinct moments: a filmic, seductive segment linking retina and music; a performative part on stage with live cameras improvising on photographs, objects, and sculptures; and a more conceptual, installation-like section. The duo has prior experience with musical texts, including a 2015 homage to Arvo Pärt at Milan's Teatro Dal Verme and set designs for Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Fondazione Arena di Verona in the same year.