{"id":3633,"date":"2007-01-05T14:55:09","date_gmt":"2007-01-05T14:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/divine-comedy-the-opera.html"},"modified":"2007-01-05T14:55:09","modified_gmt":"2007-01-05T14:55:09","slug":"divine-comedy-the-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/divine-comedy-the-opera.html","title":{"rendered":"Divine Comedy: The Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CNS story:<\/a><\/p>\n

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A Rome monsignor has composed an extravagant musical version of "The Divine Comedy," featuring symphonic music in heaven, Gregorian chant in purgatory and hard rock in hell.<\/p>\n

That’s not a value judgment on rock music — it just seemed to fit the spirit of rebellion in Dante’s description of the inferno, Msgr. Marco Frisina told Vatican Radio Jan. 4.<\/p>\n

Msgr. Frisina, a liturgy official for the Diocese of Rome and a well-known composer of religious music, said the new work, "The Divine Comedy: The Opera," will use a 100-piece orchestra, 50 dancers and singers, and more than 250 costumes.<\/p>\n

According to the opera’s production company, Nova Ars, the set will be one of the biggest ever used for an operatic work and will be designed to allow audience interaction in some of the scenes.<\/p>\n

The priest has dedicated the opera’s musical score to Pope Benedict XVI and said he hopes the pontiff will attend the premiere in Rome next fall. The production is expected to tour Europe.<\/p>\n

Msgr. Frisina already has stirred up controversy by saying he will put rock, punk and heavy metal music in hell.<\/p>\n

"I’m simply using the music and sounds of rock to communicate that sense of laceration, drama and deep rebellion that rock music can express so well," he said.<\/p>\n

"I needed rock music for the sounds in the city of Dis (the lowest part of hell), for the most violent part of Dante’s inferno. But this is not a judgment about rock," he said.<\/p>\n

The second half of the opera portrays the pilgrim’s path through purgatory to paradise, and the music no longer expresses passion or desperation, but a "desire of the absolute," Msgr. Frisina said. Gregorian chant and symphonic harmony were the appropriate musical choices, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the Vatican Radio report.<\/a> About 3 minutes. It’s well worth listening to, in addition to the article. He indicates that he was inspired by Deus Caritas Est. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CNS story: A Rome monsignor has composed an extravagant musical version of "The Divine Comedy," featuring symphonic music in heaven, Gregorian chant in purgatory and hard rock in hell. That’s not a value judgment on rock music — it just seemed to fit the spirit of rebellion in Dante’s description of the inferno, Msgr.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDivine Comedy: The Opera - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/divine-comedy-the-opera.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Divine Comedy: The Opera - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The CNS story: A Rome monsignor has composed an extravagant musical version of "The Divine Comedy," featuring symphonic music in heaven, Gregorian chant in purgatory and hard rock in hell. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}