4 ACUMEN • SPRING 2024 Salerni loves Italian fables, and his previous two are titled The Big Sword and The Little Broom and The Old Witch and the New Moon. Palma had Salerni collaborating with Gioia, the former Poet Laureate of California and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Gioia had written the texts for the narratives of the two previous fables. That’s not all they have done together. Salerni’s one-act opera Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast, with a libretto by Gioia, won the National Opera Association’s Chamber Opera competition. Salerni and Gioia have written a second oneact together (Haunted), and Salerni has set 15 of Gioia’s poems to music. “I said, ‘Dana, they want me to write a piece, and I want to do another Italian fable.’ This fable actually comes from the region from which my paternal grandparents emigrated (the Abruzzo). The original version in Italo Calvino’s collection is called Joseph Ciufolo. I wanted to have a female protagonist because I wanted to name the piece after my mother,” he says. “So, Dana modified the narrative and wrote the words that the chorus would sing.” Salerni brought Palma to Lehigh in February for performances by the Lehigh University Philharmonic in Zoellner Arts Center. The performance that night included all three Italian fables and also featured violinist Diane Monroe, who is one of the Music Department’s Horger Artists-in-Residence. ANTHROPOLOGY URBAN RENEWAL OF UTOPIA In 1950, East German socialists built the city of Eisenhüttenstadt, now Germany’s largest architectural heritage site. Designed on a drawing board, it was constructed to be a utopian city shaped by socialist ideals. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, municipal leaders have worked to revitalize their city, and this urban renewal is the focus of research by anthropologist Samantha Fox. THE HUMANITIES MUSIC PALMA In celebration of their 50th anniversaries, WVIA Radio and The Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic jointly commissioned and presented on Nov. 4 the world premiere of Palma, a fable for narrator, young string players, young chorus and symphonic orchestra with music by Paul Salerni and text by Dana Gioia. Premiering at the Scranton Cultural Center, this newly commissioned selection completed a trilogy of fableinspired works by Salerni, who is the NEH Distinguished Chair in the Humanities at Lehigh and director of the Lehigh University Philharmonic. The work features the main character, Palma, who struggles to make a living tilling the soil but loves to play music on a cherished and magical violin. Set long ago in Italy, Palma is named after Salerni’s mother, who was born in Carbondale, a mining town in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre region. Salerni says the idea for Palma had been percolating since 2016 while he was on academic leave. It was left unfinished because he didn’t think he would have an opportunity to have it performed. A year ago, WVIA program director Erica Funke suggested commissioning a new work as a salute to the station and its popular collection of programming serving northeast Pennsylvania. After discussing the commission with Funke, Salerni realized Palma would be the ideal piece and finished the work in six months. COURTESY OF PAUL SALERNI, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO Socialist architecture is often seen as large, prefabricated concrete apartment blocks in uniform gray. But, most of Eisenhüttenstadt was built at an earlier time of monumental and experimental architectural style, says Fox. The city center is built in a style that is often called the Stalinist wedding cake because many buildings have ornate tiered construction. East German architects and planners imagined themselves as managers of total space. Their goals were to maximize social engagement among residents and to infuse architecture, the built environment and the natural world with a sense of harmony that instilled pride in the socialist project, says Fox, assistant professor of anthropology in the department of sociology and anthropology. Capitalist architects, in the socialist imagination, designed isolated urban elements with the goal of maximizing profit for the builder or investor. Eisenhüttenstadt’s planners had no concern about profitability. “You could build the perfect social environment without worrying about if this also is a moneymaking venture,” Fox says. “The initial planning paid attention to the sort of social world that A decorative facade of building on Heinrich Heine Allee, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany (above). Eisenhüttenstadt, building construction work, 1953 (right). Paul Salerni BRIEFS
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