POÈME MAUDIT
Poème Maudit is a scenographic concert in which the guitar expands and floats above a labyrinthine sound space, as if it were a figure with a thousand faces. Fuentes values the guitar as an instrument with myriad possibilities–microtonal, agile, resonant, percussive, spectral, rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, and ready to be prepared with objects on its strings and body. This »augmented« guitar is ideal for Fuentes’ exploration of the auditory and scenic possibilities of his compositional language.
In Poème Maudit (Cursed Poem), the composer sends »the dark psychology of a character« on a sonic journey, »as if we were entering a dream by Rimbaud, brought to ecstasy by opium and absinthe, with an expanded time and space.«
The libretto for the electronically modified voice of a young actress, embedded in the effects of the guitar ensembles, is the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and other »accursed« poets.