Micaela Hoppe
Composer
Divina Commedia
Divina Commedia (eng. The Divine Comedy) by Dante Alighieri is a comprehensive classical work, written in the 14th century. It consists of three parts:
1. Inferno, 2. Purgatorio, 3. Paradiso.
Micaela Hoppe was inspired by the final lines of Paradiso and wrote a single vocal part for mezzo-soprano. The norwegian composer Lars Audun Hadland was in turn inspired by the vocal part and wrote eight parts on violin. The result was a mixture of two composers' completely different musical languages into a common whole.
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We recorded Paradiso at the Ingesund School of Music with soprano Anna Elisa Lindqvist. Lars Audun Hadland played all the violin parts himself. Sound engineer: Kalle Widén.
(Painting of Dante Alighieri by A. Botticelli.)
Paradiso:
The italian text begin:
"O luce eterna, che sola in te sidi
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta,
e intendente te ami e arridi!"
Swedish translation by Mikael Argenziano follows:
"O eviga ljus, som blott och bart i dig vilar, blott du dig själv förstår, och av dig själv tolkas och förstående dig själv älskar, mot dig själv leende!"
We don´t have any english translation available at the moment.
The work continued...
The work on Paradiso had been so inspiring that we continued our collaboration and eventually completed both Inferno and Purgatorio.
Micaela Hoppe selected various parts from the original text, composed the vocal part and Lars Audun Hadland supplemented it with music for 16 string musicians (8 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double basses).
The music is about 30 minutes long in total. A premiere was planned in Norway in May 2023, but was unfortunately shelved due to the lockdown in the wake of the corona pandemic.
We are now looking for an opportunity to premiere this work, with its multifaceted roots: the text in the original from the 14th century, the music co-created with both harmonies and modern tones at the same time. We are open to suggestions!