Fantini Futuro (2019)

Fantini Futuro is an electronic opera for Ben Neill’s unique Mutantrumpet and countertenor with Baroque keyboards and optional interactive video projections. The piece connects early brass music with contemporary spatial sound and live electronics. Fantini Futuro is based on the music and life of early Baroque trumpeter/composer Girolamo Fantini, who was responsible for bringing the trumpet indoors from the hunt and the battlefield to the realm of art music. Using an array of interactive technologies, Fantini is depicted as a traveler through space and time by a synthesis of early music, minimalism, and digital media performance. Fantini’s translocation of the trumpet from outside to inside is mirrored and reimagined by Neill’s Mutantrumpet, which extends the acoustic instrument into the virtual realm.