The title, “Morricone Night,” seems to mean not an evening dedicated to Morricone, but all the nights and the days without light he spent in the recording studio to compose and finish his music. Sometimes to play chess, his great passion, beating the movie stars. An enduring black scene, composing and decomposing its rooms, Morricone is identified in two effective ways: multiplied by the 16 dancers, all dressed in grey, with shirt, trousers with braces and his typical black glasses, or as a little puppet (Morau always uses puppets in his pieces) speaking via ventriloquist, who also multiplies himself. In any way, with or without puppets, Morau’s choreography for the ensemble, is as usual original, and seems to be created for a unique body; highly expressive, moving as if without joints and bones, like a floating wave, sometimes interrupted by a duet or a solo, finely crafted like a Morricone’s composition. It was interesting to talk before the performance with the dancers of Aterballetto: they explained how, under the guidance of Morau and with one of his assistant choreographers (it’s well known that Morau doesn’t have a dance education), the company definitely contributed to the creation of the dance.

Fragments of Morricone’s life and career are also evoked through the real voice of the composer, like the speech in occasion of one of his two Oscars, when he especially thanked his wife Maria, always at his side, or another public talk of his lasts, when the old artist proud of being loved by people, bid his last farewell with these touching words: “ . .  . and while I was composing music for others, I realized that this was the music of my same life, of my birth and of my funeral.” Then, with a delicate touch, the dancers lay a Morricone puppet inside a grand piano like in a coffin, all around bouquets of red roses, in a kind of a miniature funeral. Confirming our first impression, “Notte Morricone” is one of the most sincere and accomplished pieces of Marcos Morau.