L’Avvenimento – Opera (1996)

This work expands an earlier work for piano and narrator, L’Avvenimento (An Occurrence), under the influence of a second inspiration: the angel’s Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, as depicted in the fresco by Ghirlandaio now in the Loggia del Comune di San Gimignano.

Mary experienced her Avvenimento without even seeking it and hers was the Avvenimento par excellence: a meeting between the divine and the human. The truth is that each of us decides what is memorable in his own life. Apparently meaningless events become memorable if the mind records them as “occurrences.” The true Avvenimento is not the fact itself but the recounting of it, even if it’s the recounting of a trivial occurrence. Anything can take on significance if one describes it. And the artists are those who tell the best stories.

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