There are not many bands out there who have embarked on a difficult journey of discovery by following their instinct and transcending the classical music form. Camerata Mediolanense is one of these few precious bands whose career we have followed for decades and who continue to make any space vibrate under the power of their rhythms and vocals. We had a unique chance to speak with Elena, Carmen, Gianfranco, and Manuel minutes after a memorable gig at Kirchenruine Wachau at the Wave Gotik Treffen this year. We would like to thank them again for giving us some of their time and for having great humour (it is so rare these days!).
Blauerosen: Hi guys, thank you for joining me for this interview, and congratulations on all the incredible music compositions you have offered us for 30 years already! Let’s start by telling me how are you feeling after this gig in Kirchenruine Wachau. I know that performing in places with historic significance is very important to you. Are there any challenges compared to performing indoors?
Elena: Performing outdoors is entirely different from a theatre, especially in terms of acoustics. The conditions are very different too. We have never performed in Kirchenruine Wachau before this was a unique experience for us, we were only aware of this place as it appeared on WGT’s logo.
Giancarlo: In the past we have performed in a forest in Italy, (it was very cold out there)!
Elena: We have also performed on the site of an ancient church in Milan, the Church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto, which had an important role 
to play during the Black Death: it is located in the center of what was the huge Lazaret hospital, where plague patients were locked up. From 1582 a procession of suffrage for the victims of the plague started from the Cathedral with the participation of the clergy of the cathedral and the people. The solemn procession was celebrated every year on Pentecost Monday and ceased with the French occupation. The original church has been rebuilt and restored many times; the proceeds from our concert were donated for the restoration of the building. Visitors are completely unaware of the History of this place.
Blauerosen: Seeing that you are celebrating 30 years since the formation of the Camerata what do you feel has changed, if anything in the way you approach music and your original intentions with this band?
Giancarlo: The first thing that has changed is that we are growing older. (laughs)
Elena: Yes indeed (laughs). Despite that, I feel that our artistic process is linear as we are always following the same path we started 30 years ago. There are no big changes in our work, but our music constantly evolves of course, as music is a language, that constantly changes. 
The band’s line-up is changing as well, for example, Desirée, Chiara, and Giancarlo joined us in 2012. However, the most important thing is that we are all friends. People don’t just come to the band because we have called for collaborators. They are all professionally trained musicians in piano, harpsichord, composition, lyrical chant, etc.
Carmen: I met Elena in January 1998. We met each other in Milan, then I went to London and then back in Milan and we started our collaboration in 2013.
Elena: With Giancarlo, we were in the same music class at the Conservatory. About Carmen, going back to 1998, I was in the audience at an Argine concert where she sang and I was struck by her skill and her communication skills on stage. I was very sad when I learned that she was no longer in that band (which is still one of my favourite bands). Many years later we met in Milan and became friends.
Blauerosen: You have a new album coming out next month and we had a rare chance to listen to some songs from it during this gig. Two songs have been released so far, and they are both inspired by this unusual book by Michael Maier entitled: ‘Atalanta Fugiens‘. What sparked your interest in this book? And, will the whole album be based on it?
Elena: Yes, the whole album will be based on ‘Atalanta Fugiens‘. All the lyrics within this album will be in Latin as we are using texts from
this book. Michael Maier was a German alchemist, a writer, and a musical composer too: he had written 50 fugues, one for each chapter of the book, also using alchemic poetry and this is something that no one else has ever done. We found this incredible!
Blauerosen: I appreciate the way you find modern meanings in texts and ideas published so far in the past. To be more specific, the idea of embodied suffering that we see visualised in the video of ‘Hermaphoditus’ is quite striking. The subject of gender dysphoria has dominated the discourse in Western countries and to a lesser extent in Eastern countries as well. However, the concept that is being advocated is that of empowerment. The suffering aspect of the processes of transformation is almost hidden. I can find some religious comparisons and allegories being made in that video, coupled with a directorial style that brings to mind Italian movies of the 60s. Would you like to talk to us about this song and its video a little bit?
Carmen: Yes, for the Hermaphroditus’ role I looked for an actor who had Christ-like features, as I consider Hermaphroditus a sort of Jesus Christ who must undertake a path – made of efforts and sufferings – towards transformation and rebirth (similarly to what happens in the alchemical process). In my opinion, filming in extreme situations underlined that idea. I think that the editing done by Alan, very fast and tight, enhances the enormous work that leads to the realization of every creative act.
Elena: We agree with what you observed: the ideas of transformation and change seem to be all pleasant and easy in the world today. But changes are not so easy, and nobody talks about that at all.
Blauerosen: The idea of suffering when talking about your relationship with Italy has come up before in a previous interview some years ago. The dramatic element in your videos complements this idea. Have things improved? How has your relationship with Italy changed throughout your career?
Elena: We started out defining ourselves as “Mediolanenses”, to underline with a certain pride our Milanese city roots. The specificity of 
Italian localisms (a value, for us, and not a flaw) was an unspeakable reality that the system at all levels tended to hide. Italy in those years was still a State based on a unitary vision, imposed and not intimately shared by the populations who were very different from each other. Our basic idea was provocative but based on a deep discomfort. Today, thirty years later, the differences between Italians have certainly become less marked; however, this occurs within the framework of a much more aggressive process of hetero-directed homologation, tending to reshape the peninsula (and the continent that contains it) into a colourless and tasteless organism, in which everyone loses.
It is so difficult to create and perform this kind of music, with these assumptions. First of all, we encounter the objective difficulty of finding assistance and support in a context of ignorance and bad taste, which makes it difficult to carry forward a cultural project like ours. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that the level of study required is considerable. To end, we have a lot of instruments and we travel with them as well (last night we lost one of our snare drums!). This is a very complicated band.
Elena, Giancarlo, Carmen: (laugh)
Carmen: We have high expectations from ourselves and that is why albums take a long time to be produced. This type of music has unique technical requirements so finding the right people to accommodate this, is a real struggle.
Giancarlo: Every concert we do is a challenge.
Elena: Camerata Mediolanense creates a unique type of music. So describing the requirements to a technical team is not easy. For example,
we cannot say that this is medieval music because it isn’t. At the same time, it is not baroque but it is also neither pop nor rock, so…
Giancarlo: Suffering!
Elena, Giancarlo, and Carmen: (all laugh)
Blauerosen: Would you say that there is a vibrant dark alternative scene in Italy these days? How has your music been received?
Elena: At the moment the dark scene in Italy is quite languishing. There are still several groups that have many decades behind them, including for example Ataraxia and the aforementioned Argine. The big problem is that, among the new bands that appear quite often, no one seems to resist and bring forward their own proposal. It is not only necessary to be musically interesting and perhaps original, and this is already difficult, but it is also necessary not to fall apart like snow in the sun at the first difficulty.
Blauerosen: The band has been bringing together the dark alternative and the neoclassical scenes for 30 years. What was the last darkwave record or piece of music that you have been obsessing about? Have you been to a classical music concert recently that changed the way you thought about the piece of music that was being performed?
Elena: Darkwave is the music of my past because today I can’t find any genius in the new releases.
Giancarlo: Baroque is my music. J. S. Bach is perhaps the Master.
Elena: Yes, baroque refers to our ‘other’ side. It is very difficult to choose a composer among the many that I appreciate in the field of ancient music. I particularly like Italian music from the Baroque period. Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Corelli, Scarlatti… but how can I not mention Dowland, Purcell, Couperin, Bach, Handel, and many others…? I also love early 19th-century Italian opera, especially Bellini.
Giancarlo: Every time I visit Leipzig, I always go on a pilgrimage to the Thomaskirche to pay homage to Bach’s tomb. I enjoy music from the Gothic period, too.
Elena: In terms of darkwave music…
(at this point Manuel joins us and says): Play Dead, Danse Society, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins…
Blauerosen: If you could go into an existing orchestra and offer one of your pieces to their repertoire which one would it be, under which conductor and why?
Elena: I have no doubts: I would offer the whole album ‘Vertute, Honor, Bellezza‘ which was based on Petrarch’s poetry because we have arranged it in a quite electronic mood: so, listening to another version of it, with traditional instruments in an orchestra, with or also without voices, would be very different and very interesting I think.
Giancarlo: Berlin Orchestra.
Elena: Yes, the Berliner Philarmoniker!
Blauerosen: You have previously released an art book with your album, will there be one accompanying this release?
Elena: Yes, after the two nice artbooks of ‘Vertute, Honor, Bellezza’ and ‘Le Vergini Folli‘, this time too, thanks to our Prophecy-Auerbach label, we have the opportunity to publish an elegant book version, with a double CD inside. We exploited the art images from Michael Maier’s book. The graphic designer who works for Prophecy created an excellent layout work for us.
Blauerosen: I have been trying to decode the visual and linguistic messages of your symbol/emblem. What can you share with us about its inception?
Elena: The triskele was our very first symbol and we have not used symbols ever since. It included some suggestions about ideas we were exploring in the past, and we still carry them forward but in a private form, since for a long time we have preferred to express only sound materials.
Thank you so much for speaking with us and we hope to see you sometime live in London.
Have a look at more photos from this gig here.
Blaue Rosen 
