ABOUT

Fabrizio Funari was born in Rome, Italy, in 1991. His long-term passion for music and lyricism began at the age of thirteen with the songwriting and recording of two single EPs. From a young age, he has always been interested in theatre and opera: first as an acting and directing student and later as a lyricist and playwright. Fascinated by the norms that govern communication, he graduated in Linguistics and Oriental Languages, focusing on the philosophy of language. Polyglot, he continued his academic and professional career in London, Beijing, Madrid and Seville by writing librettos and plays in English, Spanish and Italian and collaborating with established and emerging composers such as Germán Alonso, Niño de Elche, Martin Gaughan, Kieron Smith and Marco Benetti and with international festivals such as the Venice Biennale.          

His creative engagement with contemporary opera stems from his long-term passion for ancient and postmodern literature and philosophy as well as his interest in queer theory and contemporary art to describe non-normative narratives and identities. For his line of work, he adopted a queering approach which is to be understood in its broader academic terms (i.e. the study of literature, discourse and other social and cultural areas from a non-normative perspective including social, economic, political and cultural issues and identities). Also anti-prescriptive, his writing reflects hismodus cogitandi as he restructures and reinvents its grammar, syntax, morphology and, specifically, phonetics.

MANIFESTO

1. Librettos should describe non-normative narratives and identities. This queering approach should be understood purely in its broader academic terms (i.e. the study of literature, discourse and other social and cultural areas from a non-normative perspective including social, economic, political and cultural issues and identities).
2. The librettist should consider the collective imaginary solely as an aesthetic means rather than a digestible end.
3. Librettos should reflect all contemporaneity and should not be elitist.
4. Librettos should deploy a certain degree of symbolism yet hermeticism must be avoided.
5. Librettos should be ambiguous as they portray reality and all reality is ambiguous.
6. Similar to reality, librettos have no beginning or end.
7. The librettist should defy normative language and be anti-prescriptive.
8. Opera should be considered as a synthesis of the arts so long as all its elements have authentic artistic and intellectual values in their own right.
9. Librettists should aim to actively work together with other artists as well as composers, directors and everyone involved in production.
10. Realism, realism, realism. Consciousness, consciousness, consciousness. Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom.

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