‘To copy the truth may be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better’ (Giuseppe Verdi)
Letter to Clara Maffei dated 20 October 1876, quoted in James P. Cassaro Ed. Music, Libraries and the Academy (Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, 2007, p. 218).
Mya Lurgo’s #LetterToClaraMaffei | 20.10.1876 is meant to be an homage to Giuseppe Verdi and a glimpse into what has lost its custom: correspondence. The ethical, aesthetic and philosophical communication. The direct and sincere exchange between artist and user, without mediators and interpreters of the artist’s thought.
The decision to make the work a letter accessible and readable in transparency is not voyeurism but a desire to extend this possibility of relationship to everyone, to all those who love art and would like to be touched and uplifted by it.
It is, therefore, no longer an elite, confidential dialogue between ‘artist and countess’, as in this case, but rather a free telling of the story because the work – the thing given to the public – is not detached from being an artist and from being an artist in that specific way and expressed between the lines, black on white.
The work is an integral part of all the conversations that take place and all the private experience.
The life of the artist is that quid that enables the work, and having the privilege of reading it through words and outbursts helps to perceive the vision: that creativity that can only happen when the soul has developed within itself that much life necessary to form beauty, or rather, to invent the true.
The work was selected to be exhibited within the VIRAL circuit of the Festival Verdi OFF: a series of collateral events to the Festival Verdi that aim to creatively pay homage to the figure of the great composer, stimulating a festive atmosphere throughout the city during the Festival period, from 23 September to 30 October 2016.
