Experimentum Mundi, March 7, APA Lyric Theatre With music scored for a percussionist, choir, 16 master artisans and a narrator, it was hard to have many prior notions of Experimentum Mundi. Yet this eccentric composition left the audience strangely moved.
Composer-conductor Giorgio Battistelli, a foreman in tails, appeared before a stage in darkness. He conducted Lee Chun-chow to read Diderot's Encyclopedie (in English on Saturday, in Cantonese on Sunday).
This antique list was reminiscent of a Dylan Thomas poem, except here the chatty characters were a triangular-marking square, a right-angle set square, an open waffle iron, a closed waffle iron, a marzipan mould. There was not only poetry in this list, there was also the sense of divine comedy.
Lee was less narrator than soloist, rhythms repeating, words winding to create atmosphere more than narrative.
The artisans were brought into the soundscape slowly - cobblers tapping, a stone mason chiselling, coopers building a barrel - merged cleverly by more traditional percussion played by Nicola Raffone, and the quiet song of women.
This was no gimmicky tap-tap. These men provided the energy that every performer seeks. This was the perfect concentration of craftsmen carrying out tasks they have refined and defined into themselves. The sound - never a cacophony - came to a climax at one point, then all went still, and there was a most delicate solo on eggs by the pasta-maker - breaking, scrunch, slide, ker-crunch, so satisfyingly oozy before a microphone - before he went back, implacably, to rolling pastry.