For the first time, OHT deals with music theatre by taking inspiration from Arvo Pärt’s music and from an ambiguous relationship between man and nature. The story of the village of Curon / Graun in Alto Adige, completely submerged in water in 1950, is told according to different modalities, each of which corresponds to one version of Fratres; a composition without fixed instrumentation. Text and filmed images combined with live performance, involve the audience in an epiphanic and hypnotic event, where the bell tower of the church of the submerged village of Curon becomes the only protagonist on stage, by playing – for alliteration – the role of the bell in the piece Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. In line with the political implications of the last OHT’s plays, this new theatre production depicts a drowned village, where the invisible forces of the alpine landscape can emerge vehemently through the sound of the bell – typical of Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli style.

Curon / Graun introduces the audience to a space without actors. The basis of the work is the sound of the bells and their spiritual strength due to the reconstruction of the submerged bell tower and by making the stage a literal metaphor for Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli style. The scene opens with the silence as point of no return of the Estonian composer, who thanks to six years of solitary contemplation could reach the essence of his music and what resounds deeply in people through art.

In 1950, the construction of a big dam jointed Lake Resia and Lake di Mezzo. As a result, 523 hectares of farmed land and 163 houses of the ancient village of Curon in Val Venosta were flooded. The company Montecatini, winner of the national announcement, created the biggest lake in Alto-Adige, 6 km long and 1 km wide, at the point of maximum width. The town’s residents protested against the dam construction, in a period of growing tension between local terrorists and the Italian government. A delegation from Sudtirol went unsuccessfully to Pope XII in order to prevent the creation of the work. The construction was inevitably and involved thousands of workers who dug 35 km of underground tunnels, used 1.500.000 quintal of cement, 10.000 tons of iron, 800 tons of explosives and for the fist time in Italy’s history, nitro-glycerine was used to blast the centre of Curon and partially that of Resia which were rebuilt in higher positionsdiences.