Stage Door News
Stage Door News
San Francisco Opera’s SF Opera Lab continues its inaugural season of innovative programming that celebrates the power of the human voice theatrically in intimate spaces, including the new Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco Opera’s Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera.
SF Opera Lab presents an exuberant new production of composer Ana Sokolović's "compelling and beautifully transparent" (Opera News) chamber opera, Svadba–Wedding, conducted by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and directed by Michael Cavanagh. The cast features Jacqueline Woodley (as the bride, Milica), Liesbeth Devos (Danica), Laura Albino (Lena), Pauline Sikirdji (Zora), Andrea Ludwig (Nada) and Krisztina Szabó (Ljubica). The seven performances run April 2 through 10, 2016, and audiences are invited to a complimentary post-performance after-party with champagne and wedding cake.
Svadba-Wedding, composed by Montreal-based Ana Sokolović, is a virtuosic a cappella tour de force for six female opera singers. Sung in Serbian, the action takes place the night before a wedding as a bride-to-be and her best friends engage in raucous girl-talk, invoking pagan rituals as they celebrate their last night as unmarried friends while preparing for the impending marriage.
Using existing Slavic/Balkan folk tales and myths as her text source, Sokolović uses a newly invented fantasy language for the opera. What elevates this girl-talk to a supernaturally intoxicating experience is her style of composition. Drawing on her native Balkan folk music as a source of inspiration for her music, the singers have to use all possible variations for the voice—opera singing with Balkan folk voice, overtones, extreme chest voice, heightened nasal voice, whispering and rhythmic riffs, creating a wildly onomatopoeic palette of colors and sounds. The experience is unforgettable, an immersion into a world of ravishing and seductive sensations. Svadba-Wedding was originally commissioned and produced by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess of Toronto’s Queen of Puddings Music Theatre in 2011.
Ana Sokolović says of the work: “When Queen of Puddings approached me to write an opera for six female voices, I took this opportunity to explore the wedding theme, especially the night before the ceremony, where we are privy to private and ancient rituals between the bride and her girlfriends.
The text is taken from original Serbian poetry but given a new context for our contemporary culture. The music is derived from traditional folklore. The compositional structure is informed by everyday images and objects – such as hair, cups, and water. The scenes unfold, not in a linear narrative, but in a playful interconnection animated through drama, distilling magic and fantasy from ordinary moments.
A wedding is an important turning point in every woman’s life, usually steeped in tradition and always signifying change and juncture. Milica’s rite of passage is universal, an archetype of human experience. Svadba–Wedding offers a chance to delve deep into the quality and richness of a short but decisive moment in time.”
The new site-specific production created for San Francisco Opera’s new Taube Atrium Theater is conceived by director Michael Cavanagh, whose previous work for the Company includes new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor (2015) and Susannah (2014), and Nixon in China (2012). The audience will be seated at café tables while the opera unfolds on stages throughout the theater. Projection, set and lighting design is by Alexander V. Nichols and costume design is by Kristi Johnson. Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess are co-music directors of Svadba-Wedding.
SVADBA–WEDDING
By Ana Sokolović / New SF Opera Lab Production Premiere
April 2 (8 p.m.), 3 (3 p.m.), 5 (8 p.m.), 6 (8 p.m.), 8 (8 p.m.), 9 (8 p.m.), 10 (3 p.m.), 2016
Taube Atrium Theater
at the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera
Veterans Building, Fourth Floor
401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102
Sung in Serbian
Approximate running time: 1 hour with no intermission
First Performance: Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre; June 24, 2011
CAST:
Milica Jacqueline Woodley
Danica Liesbeth Devos
Lena Laura Albino
Zora Pauline Sikirdji
Nada Andrea Ludwig
Ljubica Krisztina Szabó
CREATIVE TEAM:
Stage Direction Michael Cavanagh
Conductor/Co-Music Direction Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
Co-Music Direction John Hess
Projection, Set and Lighting Design Alexander V. Nichols
Costume Design Kristi Johnson
A Serbian bride-to-be and her friends prepare for her wedding day in this virtuosic a capella opera for six female voices. Michael Cavanagh directs an exuberant new SF Opera Lab production of Ana Sokolović's "compelling and beautifully transparent" score (Opera News). And you're invited to the after-party!
For more information about SF Opera Lab, visit http://sfopera.com/sfoperalab.
Photo: Jacqueline Woodley, Liesbeth Devos, Laura Albino, Pauline Sikirdji, Andrea Ludwig and Krisztina Szabó. ©2016 Stefan Cohen.
2016-04-02
San Francisco: A new production of Ana Sokolović's "Svabda - Wedding" opens tonight