Escala de autoconcepto académico de

On a textual level the theme of openness manifests in two ways: through textural allusions and passages that explicitly present the concept of openness. The first point is closely related to the above idea regarding the lack of explanation and context. The textural allusions, in fact, occur every time the characters’ lyrics allude to elements, facts, or questions, requiring explanations that the opera does not provide. Such allusions are transversal, in the sense that they are featured across all scenes. Arguably, the most noticeable example manifests in the Common People’s words. Their lines ‘Where is he?’ , ‘Look over here, look over there!’, ‘We’ll find him!’, etc., imply the necessity of an antefatto that could explain why they look for someone, who this person is, and what would happen if s/he is found. No scene attempts to provide answers to these points. They remain unexplained for the whole work. The context in which these phrases occur, thus, is totally open to the audience’s imagination. Other examples of textural openness are to be found in the mafioso’s lyrics. In Scene Two, for instance, an unexplained dialogue-of-allusions occurs between Osso and Mastrosso. It reads as follows:

Mastrosso: - Don’t you feel guilty?

Osso: - No!

Mastrosso: - Neither do I... Don’t you think you are to blame?

107 _{Eco, Lector in Fabula, 52.}

108 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). These words are said by the Common People in Scenes Three, Five,}

Osso: - No! 109

The questions Mastrosso asks are mere allusion. They, in fact, would imply a number of counter-questions such as: ‘guilty’ of what?; ‘blame’ for what?; why do they ask each other whether they feel guilty and blameworthy? The answers are not provided, and it is such lack of explanations that demands the spectators to imagine possible antefatti and contexts. This passage, thus, can be said to be open, in that it leads to imagining causes and consequences for the characters’ vicissitudes. Similarly, in Scene Four, Carcagnosso’s words function as allusions to unsaid ante- and post-fatti:

Carcagnosso: - Where are my dreams? Where are their dreams? Where are your dreams?

There is a virtue to defend, there is a honour to protect.

There are dreams to bring to life! 110

Some of the counter-questions this passage would imply are: what ‘dreams’ is Carcagnosso talking about?; what ‘virtue’ is to be defended?; what ‘honour’ has to be protected?; how do such dreams, virtue and honour relate to the other scenes?; and what consequences do they imply for the following events? Again, these indirect questions are not answered, but left to the imagination. At the same time, this passage also highlights the active (mental) role of the audience. The question ‘where are your dreams?’ is addressed to the spectators, who are implicitly asked to evoke (imagine

or invent) their own ‘dreams’.111 _{This phrase recalls Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, inasmuch as it}

aims at estranging the spectator from the on-stage narration in order to let him/her identify with the actor’s conflicts: ‘your dreams’ eventually become the spectator’s dreams. The audience’s dreams (virtues and honours) become part of Carcagnosso’s vicissitude, and the character’s non-specified dreams turn out to be the dreams of the spectators. These latter, consequently, empathise with the character through a non-articulated common relationship, an unspecified common dream(s).

On the contrary, the texts that explicitly present the concept of openness are to be found in the Jokers’ lyrics. The Jokers appear in the second half of the work, after several narrative

109 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This passage comes from ‘Scene 2 - Osso and Mastrosso: spiritual poverty}

and criminality’.

110 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This passage comes from ‘Scene 4 - Carcagnosso: sense of dream’.} 111 _{In order to emphasise Carcagnosso’s theatrical gesture of asking to the audience the question ‘where are your}

dreams?’ I have inserted on the score the direction ‘chiedendo esplicitamente al pubblico’ (explicitly asking to the audience). See: Simone Spagnolo, It makes no difference (full score), bars 359-360.

fragments have been presented. They differ from the others characters in that they do not stand for a social class stereotype, but epitomise the idea of openness itself. Their role is to highlight the open properties of the whole work and generate the awareness that the narrative(s) in It makes no

difference can be seen from various (even opposite) points of view. Such a concept can be found in

Scene Eleven, when the Jokers sing the following line:

Each tale chases another tale, and while a diner advances his strip another

from the furthest extreme advances in the opposite direction. 112

‘Each tale’ represents each narrative fragment of the opera, and the ‘diner’ represents the spectators. The whole sentence, thus, functions as a metaphor suggesting that, depending on perspectives (‘strip’ and ‘direction’), every story can be linked to all the others (‘each tale chases

another tale’). This passage is taken from Calvino’s Il castello dei destini incrociati (The castle of

crossed destinies, 1973),113 _{in which the writer generated a number of stories by juxtaposing tarot}

cards. These, depending on combinations and interpretations, gave life to different stories. It makes no difference’s narrative fragments recall Il castello dei destini incrociati’s tarot cards, in that they both function as a closed, defined number of elements that, in the process of fruition, become open to manifold interpretations. In this way, each spectator’s interpretation of such elements gives life to new stories. This concept is enclosed in Scene Thirteen’s lyrics, when the Jokers appear for the second time and sing another extract from Il castello dei destini incrociati. This reads as follows:

The world does not exist, there is not a whole given all at once: there is a finite number of elements whose combinations multiply by billions of billions. 114

In Il castello dei destini incrociati, the ‘finite number of elements’ this passage refers to represents the tarot cards. These function as a source of infinite (‘billions of billions’) stories, all of which are the result of possible combinations. Similarly, in It makes no difference, the ‘finite

112 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This line can be found in ‘Scene 11 - The Jokers: each tale chases anther}

tale’.

This sentence may read as ambiguous or unclear; it has, however, to be considered that, as explained later in the Chapter, this line is taken from Calvino’s Il castello dei destini incrociati (The castle of crossed destinies, 1973) and

therefore has been decontextualised from its original sense. In Il castello dei destini incrociati the ‘tales’ are composed of ‘strips’ of tarot cards placed (‘advanced’) by the novel’s characters, who are the ‘diners’ of a castle. Hence, the literal sense of this line has to be found in its original source, Il castello dei destini incrociati; in It makes no difference, on the contrary, the spectator is encouraged to assign it a metaphorical sense.

113 _{Il castello dei destini incrociati is a work based on the use of ‘tarot cards as a combinatory narrating machine’ [Italo}

Calvino, Il castello dei destini incrociati trans. Simone Spagnolo (Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 1994), VI].

114 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This line can be found in ‘Scene 13 - The Jokers: there is a finite number}

number of elements’ represents the narrative fragments. These, depending on the audience’s interpretations, generate ‘billions of billions’ of stories. Such an openness to manifold perspectives recalls Berio’s La vera storia, in that it highlights the idea that ‘behind a «true story» there is

another truer one’.115 _{However, while La vera storia frames two perspectives of the same story, It}

makes no difference presents various fragments of unrelated stories and lets the audience assemble

them (‘advance strips’116_{). In this way, the Jokers’ lyrics capture Eco’s idea that a ‘complete and}

closed [work] [constitutes] an open product’:117 _{the finite (closed) number of narratives that It}

makes no difference presents becomes a platform for manifold, possibly infinite open-stories.

Furthermore, the Jokers’ lyrics also provide a philosophical statement. This is enclosed in

the words ‘the world does not exist’.118 _{This sentence sets forth the concept that what we experience}

(which in this case is the opera’s narrative fragments) does not objectively exist, but merely

manifests through the manifold, infinite interpretations that we (as spectators) assign. The words

‘the world does not exist’, then, acts as the emblem of both openness and Nothingness: they represent the concept of openness because they highlight that phenomena are open to ‘billions of billions’ of interpretations, and they are a symbol of Nothingness in that such infinity of

interpretations ascertains that the ‘hermetic secret must be void’.119

115 _{Luciano Berio, Un ricordo al futuro. Lezioni americane trans. Simone Spagnolo (Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore,}

2006), 87.

As in Chapter 2 Footnote 94, I have translated this quote myself from the original Italian text of Un ricordo al futuro as I believe it suggests the concept more effectively and succinctly than the English translation of Remembering the

Future, which paraphrases the sentence as follows: ‘we also wanted to suggest that a “true story” is always different

from the way it appears at first sight and that in back of it there may be another story that is even truer’ [Berio,

Remembering the Future, 109].

As mentioned in Footnote 19 of Chapter 2, Berio wrote his Harvard Charles Eliot Norton lectures partly in Italian and partly in English, and as a result there were multiple versions of each lecture. For further details see:

-_{This thesis’ Footnote 19 of Chapter 2.}

-_{Talia Pecker Berio, ‘Preface’ in: Luciano Berio, Remembering the Future (Cambridge & London: Harvard University} Press, 2006).

116 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This line can be found in ‘Scene 11 - The Jokers: each tale chases anther}

tale’.

117 _{Eco, The Open Work, 4.}

118 _{Spagnolo, It makes no difference (libretto). This line can be found in ‘Scene 13 - The Jokers: there is a finite number}

of elements whose combinations multiply by billions of billions’.