Terre du Ciel | AUGUST 2ND

“TERRE DU CIEL” – GIUSEPPE CEDERNA CON JAIME GONZALEZ E WADI ENSEMBLE

There are places where the earth seems to draw closer to the sky.
Hamlets suspended between memory and the wind, stones that guard voices, mountains that are not merely landscape but destiny, wound, protection, and story.

Rochemolles, a marvelous hamlet of Bardonecchia, is one of these places. Overwhelmed and destroyed by an avalanche in 1706, and struck again in 1961, it carries within its history the mark of an ancient fragility and a stubborn capacity for rebirth. It is here that the Narrazioni Parallele Festival presents the national premiere of “Terre du Ciel”, a work that intertwines theater, music, and literature until the breath of the performers coincides with that of the landscape.

The starting point is the novel published in 1921 by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz: the story of a mountain village overwhelmed by an avalanche, whose inhabitants are reborn in a luminous, almost celestial elsewhere. Gradually, they forget their suffering, as if happiness could erase the memory of pain.
Yet, a small loss—a stray animal, a crack in the everyday—is enough for the past to resurface and for the sky to reveal its restlessness. Always poised between mysticism and daily life, it describes the perennial struggle within the human soul between good and evil, between a perhaps unreal Paradise and a Hell always ready to burst through.

In this “village in the sky,” the mountain is never a mere backdrop. It is a living presence, a force that both protects and threatens—a place where beauty and danger inhabit the same threshold.

For this reason, Terre du Ciel finds a natural home in Rochemolles: it does not simply bring a story to a place, but allows the place itself to become part of the story. Its stones, its silences, and its memories of resilience and community enter the dramaturgy as an additional voice.

Leading the narrative is Giuseppe Cederna, an extraordinary performer capable of turning words into both a physical and interior journey. Alongside him, the oboe of Jaime Gonzalez, professor at the Hochschule in Bern, the percussion of Rossana Bribò, and the accordion of Mario Romeo—young talents from the Wadi Ensemble—construct a soundscape where the music seems to emerge from the very matter of the mountain: from the footstep, the breath, the echo, and the distance.

And the musical composition blends “poor” or “rustic” sounds—such as the accordion, percussion, and various types of oboes—with an expansive and melodic vocality that never sacrifices expressiveness.

Giuseppe Cederna: narrator

Jaime Gonzalez: oboe

Rossana Bribò: percussion

Mario Romeo: accordion

Soprano: Alida Ilaria Quilico

Mezzosoprano: Maria Salvini

Tenor: Rocco Sharkey

Giuseppe Serreli: baritone

Text and music: Willy Merz