Tredici Secondi or Un Bipede Implume ma con Unghie Piatte

When a man’s car breaks down on a country road, he’s forced to seek help. He tries to make a call but there is no signal. Eerie fog surrounds a run-down road-side bar. Cautiously, he walks towards it. After hesitating on the threshold, he slowly pushes the door and enters. Once inside, he notices the profiles of two women and a man standing against the back wall next to the counter. Except for the three characters, the bar looks deserted and sterile. The three characters are seated in a semicircle around a table staring at a large cockerel…

Selected by the Venice Biennale as a part of their Biennale College Musica 2019 international competition – chamber opera Tredici Secondi o Un Bipede Implume ma con Unghie Piatte pays homage to the theater of the absurd in that it investigates and conveys a sense of vague metaphysical anguish in the face of the burlesque absurdity of the human condition. In the dramaturgical tradition of Eugene Ionescu, Samuel Beckett and, on a more existential level, Jean Paul Sartre and Jean Genet, the libretto exposes the failure of the mechanisms of communication in contemporary society.