Exotica

The plot of the documentary “Exotica: The Story of Irene and the Triumph of Color” draws inspiration from the themes of a major research project titled “The Exotic in 17th- and 18th-Century Venetian Opera and Its Spread Throughout Europe”: a study that explores otherness and its cultural imagery in Venice, a crossroads for sailors, merchants, and artists from all over the world. The aim of the documentary “Exotica” is therefore to present to the general public, in an original way, the previously unpublished findings obtained by the group of scholars from the University of Padua. — Paola Dessì

“Before Scarlatti, before Galuppi, before Antonio Vivaldi, Carlo Francesco Pollarolo was one of the most celebrated composers of his time.” These are the opening words of the documentary Exotica. They are spoken by a narrator who guides us on a journey through history, images, and sounds. But what the film tells is not just the story of this great composer, but the moment when the music comes back to life, for the first time in centuries. The pieces Irene (1694) and Il colore fa la regina (1700) rediscover their sound thanks to an orchestral performance capable of revealing the otherness that characterizes them, the elsewhere toward which their narratives reach. The research that led to these pieces moves through frescoes, paintings, illustrations, world maps, herbariums, writings, and travel diaries: images and traces that point to different cultures, unknown traditions, and distant worlds, yet are nonetheless deeply present in the history of Venice. — Denis Brotto