Brzezinka, the forest base of the Grotowski Institute
Admission free, advance booking required:
sekretariat@grotowski-institute.art.pl
Tel. 71 34 45 320
Apply by 29 April 2014
There will be a free bus provided to take you to Brzezinka and back. The meeting point is the Grotowski Institute, Rynek-Ratusz 27, at 6:30pm. The bus departs at 6:45pm.

A ritual on laudesi
Lauda (“praise”) is a common name used for several religious and artistic impulses developed in 13th-century Italy. There is a devotional kind of lauda, which is basically a prayer; a kind of lauda whose aim is poetic research; and dramatic lauda. A deep, long-term practice of these chants has made it clear that a lauda is cut across by various “blurred boundaries”. One of them runs between ritual (for singers) and performance (for listeners); between various forms of liturgy and drama.

Chants, situated at the point where prayer, dramatic narration, poetry and music converge, were usually collected in laudari (“books of praises”). All the praises that we sing come from Laudario di Cortona, the oldest collection of liturgical monodies in the vulgar Italian. Some compositions included in Cortona are capable of bringing together all the different layers of: prayer, dramatic narration, poetry and music. This bringing together is what we seek in Stand’al mondo senza’l mondo. / Raúl Iaiza

Laude from Laudario di Cortona (Ms. 91)
“Spiritu sancto, dolçe amore” (28), “Salutiam divotamente” (46), “Da ciel venne messo novello” (6), “Ave dei genitrix” (11), “Stella nuova n fra la gente” (20), “Plangiamo quel crudel basciar” (21), “De la crudel morte de Cristo” (23), “Magdalena degna da laudare” (39), “Oime lasso e freddo lo mio core” (34), “Ben e crudele e spietoso” (22), “Chi vole lo mondo desprecçare” (35), “Ave regina gloriosa” (5).

Performers: Raquel Alarcón, Viviana Bovino, Maria Kapała, Giulia Varotto, Andrea Coppone, Raúl Iaiza
Scenic space and props: Franco Koehler and Regula contra Regulam Teatro
Costumes: Ana Maria Romano and the ensemble
Photo: Maciej Zakrzewski
Dramaturgy consultant: Lorenzo Sangalli
Musical arrangements, dramaturgy and directing: Raúl Iaiza
Thanks to: Elisabetta Fraccacreta of Elf Teatro (Milan, Italy), Else Marie Laukvik, Csongor Kollo, Gregorio Amicuzzi of Residui Teatro (Madrid, Spain), Ludwik Flaszen, Stefano Olimpi

Lyrics and music: Laudario di Cortona (Ms. 91), Codex Buranus (clm4660), Edgerton MS. 2615, Songs from the Italian tradition, Meister Eckhart, José Saramago, Gibran Khalil Gibran



Regola dei Laudesi is an international research programme focused on the theatrical potential of the musical and dramatic repertoire of laudari from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in particular Laudario di Cortona (Cortona Ms. 91, ca. 1270–1297), the oldest collection of laudi written in vulgar Italian (volgare). 

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