"ORFEO'S ORATORIO" by Alizarin Goldflake Premiere and Open Studio, Sunday, June 14, 2009, 3 - 5 pm PDT

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Huntsman/213/39/711

The germ of the idea for Orfeo came into existence in 2001 when I was playing around with my digital drawing "The Very Rich Hours" ("Pink Colonade" in RL; please see www.marthavista.com). The drawing was done with Corel Painter and a Wacom digitizing tablet, and it is huge at 4520 x 6770 pixels.

I had just finished it and for some reason I got the idea to invert it, ie., turn it into a negative image. One of my friends was very disturbed by the negative, which intrigued me. When I started thinking about my next SL build last December, the idea popped into my head of using that experience to make a mirror environment, and "Orfeo's Oratorio" was launched.

An immersive art environment, it is a virtual amusement park with an Upper
World/Under World theme. The centerpiece of the upper level is an
other-worldly fountain. Two-person steerable gondolas and 1-person fixed-path coracles play the role of bumper cars. The coracles swing the rider into space outside the build, and the view back in is spectacular. There are dance pose balls and, in a corner, a Circle of Confusion, a round table and seating with
a perpetual party going on. A quote from the end of Dante's "Inferno"
periodically drifts up and out through a circular opening in the roof. The
floor is of particular interest. Its texture of black and transparent squares
creates the illusion of a mirror-like reflection that, along with the columns
and arches, lends a Venetian atmosphere. Viewers will also want to notice how the light changes from day to night along the walls.

Two blue-jetted ferris wheels connect the Upper World to the Underworld, which is an upsidedown version of the former. Hot oranges and purples replace the cool blue colors of the Upper World, and the Salsa Inferna pose balls dance the avatars on the ceiling. The underworld coracle is ringed with fire, and particle flames shoots up from the floor. A set of flaming sconces lights up either end, and the Underworld version of the fountain hangs from the ceiling, dripping particle sparks like a giant chandelier. Another quote from the Inferno sinks slowly through the floor. And a single ferris wheel connects the rider to the Outside World, where the view from underneath is also spectacular.

337 prims, 12/24/08 - 5/14/09 (5 months to build!)

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My RL husband and collaborator in both worlds, Cobalt Zeplin, has provided some background and these thoughts on how the visuals of the build relate to the form of an oratorio:

The oratorio is a musical composition that has drawn together several
traditions. In its earliest incarnation, long before its post Renaissance
revival, the oratorio had grown as a form of Greek chorus for the telling of
epic stories or the recitation, in antiphonal style, of ritual narratives and
sacred poems of commemorations and festivals. After the Renaissance, the
oratorio became a large scale musical composition for solo voices, chorus and
orchestra, part religious opera and part musical entertainment. Bach, Handel and Haydn brought the oratorio to its highest form, with complex counterpoints and harmonies, all woven into an evangelical narrative with dramatic juxtapositions of formally structured musical interludes.

In "Orfeo's Oratorio," the narrative elements are visual, but no less
structured and orchestrated. They tell a similar story within a montage of
images. The audience views, and imagines hearing, an outline for the epic
fantasy of life. Here "Orfeo's Oratorio" is part entertainment, part tragic
comedy bounded by the realms above and below the checkered floor, each with their own storied allusions to both Dante's Inferno and an imperfect vision of Paradise as eternal amusement park. The images are contrapuntal, yet play with each other in harmony of form and monochromatic tones. This imagined oratorio harkens back to the myth itself of Orpheus, who on the one hand, as the son of the muse Calliope, was so marvelous a player of the lyre that beasts rose to his welcome and, on the other, a tragic adventurer into the netherworld who, beheaded by Maenads, never retuned except as the subject for legendary poems.

The great musical oratorios of the 17th and 18th centuries adhered loosely to
themes of the messianic Passion, Death and Resurrection. In the 19th century,
Brahms, Liszt and Berlioz crafted a more secular form, but still musical
stories built upon mishap and redemption, set within a series of increasingly
theatrical tableaus and sometimes dissonant and confounding orchestration. The musical evolution into the 20th century finally brought Elgar's tone poem in oratorio style, the Dream of Gerontius. It stands as a modern retelling of the Orphic experience. Gerontius, now a ghost, awakes in a place apparently without space or time. He journeys, like an animated avatar, past demons and choirs of angels, through fiery pits and fountains until the Moment of Judgment, whereupon he is lowered into the soothing lake of Purgatory, given benediction and the promise of future glory. That same fate, with an extra boat or Ferris wheel ride and bouts of celebratory dancing amidst the flames, also awaits the visitor to Orfeo's Oratorio, Alizarin Goldflake's visual build in Second Life.

The musical accompaniement, perhaps in descending minor chords, remains to be easily imagined.

Cobalt Zeplin

NB: Cobalt's RL mother was Selma Bojalad, a noted opera singer in the 30's and 40's


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Huntsman/210/27/696