MANDEL’ŠTAM

2024
MANDEL’ŠTAM
variations on the voice of the poet Osip Mandel’štam
Roberto Paci Dalò dedicates this project to the life and work of the Jewish-Russian poet Osip Mandel’štam (1891–1938), developing a cycle of solo performances rooted in both his writings,  his biography and his relationship with Armenia.

7LEMI احلامي

2023
Wissal Houbabi and Roberto Paci Dalò create 7LEMI (My Dreams), a performance-flow in which vocal, instrumental and electronic materials draw a dreamtime. The creation of an acoustic and dreamlike environment within which the voices move, guided by chironomy, between intelligibility of the text (in Dārija) and glossolalia, aphasia and pre-verbal language. The sheet of paper is abandoned to enter the forest of memory and orality where “the language of your dreams is the language of your flesh”.

Sayat-Nova Սայաթ-Նովա

2026
Sayat-Nova (1712–1795) was an ashugh (a traveling bard-poet of the Caucasus), author of compositions in Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani. He wrote texts intended for singing, accompanying himself on string instruments. The performance is based on his texts, in which love, desire, spirituality, loss, and religious contemplation intertwine in a language of great lyrical intensity. Voice and instruments gather, giving a phonetic body to the words.

Con falci d’amore

2026
More than a concert or a poetic performance, Con falci d’amore (nenia per il nuovo millennio) takes the form of a single artistic dispositif in which word, voice, music, and electronics generate one another reciprocally. The work arises from the encounter between Giorgiomaria Cornelio’s poetic and performative research and Roberto Paci Dalò’s sonic and compositional research, both of whom share a conception of the artwork as a space of listening, passage, and transformation.

eBAU

2024
eBAU. Art Dreams for the New European Bauhaus is a collection of thoughts and ideas on what a New European Bauhaus could be. Not an essay, not an administrative document, not a plea nor a manifesto. Simply a series of suggestions morphing into fleeting visions, sudden vistas breaking through the fog of daily life. What can art mean for the European Bauhaus? What can artists bring to the idea of a new school that invents a new aesthetics, green and sustainable and equal, for a better world? Artist Roberto Paci Dalò shares his thoughts in drawings and texts. An artist’s book, a light collection of insights and incitements fluttering out of the page, to point to other realities that are ours to invent.

Wolf Tone

2026
Laura Bisceglia and Roberto Paci Dalò present Wolf Tone. Bass clarinet and cello inhabit the same shadow register, often becoming difficult to distinguish. The duo investigates the moment in which sound ceases to behave obediently and begins to reveal its own internal turbulence. Through breath, bow friction, microtonal interference, voice and live electronics, the duo amplifies moments where sound becomes unstable, excessive, and unpredictable, evoking the phenomenon of the “wolf tone” in string instruments: resonance escaping control. And then there is the shared love of wolves by both artists.

Crown Quartet

2020
Crown Quartet is an international ensemble of contemporary music bringing together four distinctive artistic voices: Zahra Mani (Croatia), Roberto Paci Dalò (Italy), Tibor Szemző (Hungary), and Mia Zabelka (Austria). Since its formation in 2020, the quartet has developed a unique artistic language that moves between composition and improvisation, integrating multilingual texts, voice, instrumental performance, electronics, and field recordings.

Belluno

2023
A performance by Patrizia Valduga and Roberto Paci Dalò after her book “Belluno” . “Già vi sento: –La Valduga è impazzita. Sarete savii voi, teste di cazzo… No, la Valduga è savia, o rinsavita. Se parlate di velette, vi ammazzo.”

La guerra e il sogno di Momi

2026
World War I seen through the eyes of a child: this is the prologue of the historic silent stop-motion medium-length film, La guerra e il sogno di Momi, presented for the first time with the previously unreleased score performed live by Roberto Paci Dalò.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

2025
A new score created by Roberto Paci Dalò for the same cult film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, a silent film directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and screened for the first time on 4th March 1922 in Berlin. Considered the masterpiece of the German director and one of the cornerstones of horror and expressionist cinema, Nosferatu the vampire is loosely based on the novel Dracula (1897) by the Irish writer Bram Stoker.

Ararat

2025
The concert, entitled Ararat, sees the presence of composers and musicians Roberto Paci Dalò e Giacomo Vanelli. The Mount Ararat: sacred peak, lost heart, indelible symbol of Armenian identity. Today it stands beyond the border, in Turkish territory, but continues to dominate the horizon of the capital Yerevan. It is the mountain of Noah’s Ark, of salvation and rebirth, but also the mountain of absence, of denied land, of desire. In the silence of its snow-covered slopes, the condition of the diaspora is reflected, the wound of separation and, at the same time, the hope of a return.

Mappia

2023
The Ministry of Culture has nominated the Via Appia in Rome for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Part of the candidacy documentation is Mappia, a work by Roberto Paci Dalò commissioned by the MiC. The artist and cartographer has created a map of over 9 meters in leporello format.

DUCTUS

2022
Ductus is a site-specifc artwork born on the occasion of the new refurbishment of Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. A chronological map, realized in watercolor graphite and Indian ink, that remedies, through images, symbols and words, some watersheds of history and art in Umbria.

Temporanea

2024
Temporanea by/with  Giorgiomaria Cornelio, Roberto Paci Dalò, Ida Travi. A weaving of voices – concert. Temporanea unites the visions and poetics of the three artists, an ensemble made of voices, instruments and electronics.

Lament. A Sound Ritual

2022
LAMENT is a sound ritual where analog and digital sounds merge. A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments constitute some of the oldest forms of writing, and examples exist across human cultures.

Niggunim

2018
Roberto Paci Dalò reworks traditional materials by combining clarinet and bass clarinet with live electronics. Creating a bridge between tradition and contemporaneity in the name of a music of prayer that involves sound and body. Niggun (niggunim plural) means in Hebrew: “air” or “melody” and is a form of Jewish religious song or melody sung by groups. It is a technique of singing, often with abstract repetitive sounds in place of a formal lyric. Sometimes verses from the Torah, or quotes from other classical Jewish texts, are sung repetitively to create a niggun. Some niggunim are sung as prayers of lamentation, while others may be joyful or victorious. 

Risvegli

2022
Risvegli is a site-specific project of images, drawing and sound realized by Roberto Paci Dalò and Nicoletta Ceccoli for the National Pavilion of the Republic of San Marino at La Biennale di Venezia 59th International Art Exhibition.

Repertoire

2021
100 scenes, 300 sound objects, 5 performers and a painted scene: Repertoire is an open work that leaves great inventive freedom. Roberto Paci Dalò presents a new performance of Mauricio Kagel’s work in a setting in which “everything is separate, everything is together”. Aperto Festival, Reggio Emilia.

In Darkness Let Me Dwell

2018
The historical archive of the Banco di Napoli becomes the subject of a film by Roberto Paci Dalò based on a cinematic exploration of this extraordinary place. A journey into the details, into the folds of History and stories made of images that will speak through sounds, some of which are precisely those of the pages of the folders that, leafed through and elaborated, through light electronics, will become ambient music. The sound of the archive, its voice. Using black and white, a timeless work has been created that gives life to a suspended state of mind, attentive to these documents.

HA

2020
HA is a radiophonic sound forest created from the real voice of Hannah Arendt intertwined with instrumental and electronic sounds. A sensorial journey in her phonetics where words are transformed into cartographical sonic materials. A cinematic and experimental approach where, however, even complex materials are organized in a radio composition accessible to all audiences.

Organo Magico Organo Laico

2006
Organo Magico Organo Laico is a multimedial, scenic and musical project by Roberto Paci Dalò designed to enhance the value of an ancient Mantuan organ of the nineteenth century, enigmatically placed in a “secular” place. Not in a church, but inside a theatre, the mysterious and “magic” sound object is located in the Reggio Emilia Valleys and is inaccessible to the gaze of the public in the hall. The project includes the creation of ten new musical scores composed ad hoc for the precious organ, which finally becomes the protagonist of the theatrical scene. In addition, some architectural and constituent details of the organ are shown to the public through the projection of some of its details on large white canvases placed on the proscenium.

Space is the Place

2018
Space is the Place by Roberto Paci Dalò is a performance for radio telescope sounds and modular synth. The project is a hommage to composer and poet Sun Ra and in particular his Space Is the Place film and album.

Ye Shanghai

2012
Ye Shanghai is a project by Roberto Paci Dalò that includes a filmic work, an exhibition, an audio-video installation, a record and live performances. The project shows the unexplored history of the Shanghai Ghetto. The city of Shanghai was the last port open to Jews fleeing the Nazi occupation. The Jewish refugees went to a ghetto in the district of Hongkou, an area of Shanghai that had been occupied by Japan. As Ye Shanghai shows, three cultures unexpectedly found themselves living together in a small area of Shanghai: Hebrew, Chinese and Japanese.

Italia anno zero

2004
Italia anno zero is a scenic, musical and cinematographic project by Roberto Paci Dalò and Olga Neuwirth, based on texts by Antonio Gramsci, Giacomo Leopardi and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The works of these great writers of Italian literature are presented in a scenic concert with an original staff: a band of five members composed of clarinets, guitar, electronics, sampler and theremin vox. After the premiere at the Budapest Autumn Festival in 2004, Italia anno zero has been presented in France, United Kingdom, Austria, and Germany.

Il mestiere delle armi

Funkhaus Heiner Müller

2020
Funkhuas Heiner Müller is a cycle of workshops and performances, conceived and led by Roberto Paci Dalò, that takes place in different locations. The workshop focuses on the texts of the German playwright Heiner Müller. At each stage different texts are used and become the basis for staging a performance adapted to the location and broadcasted live on the radio.