সোমবার, ১৪ জানুয়ারী, ২০১৩

Edmonton production of Svadba ? Wedding an operatic tour-de-force

Svadba ? Wedding

Companies: Edmonton Opera and Queen of Puddings Music Theatre

Composer: Ana Sokolovic

Music Directors: D?irine N? Mheadhra and John Hess

Director: Michael Cavanagh

Continues: Sunday at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.

Where: C103 (formerly Catalyst Theatre), 8529 Gateway Blvd.

Tickets: $55 through edmontonopera.com

If you love contemporary classical music, if you sing in a choir, if you are Serbian, if you simply want to experience what the best of modern theatre can do, go buy a ticket for a truly remarkable show on this week at C103 Theatre on Gateway Boulevard. And do so as soon as you can, for there aren?t many tickets left.

It?s Svadba-Wedding, a 51-minute tour-de-force for six singers by Canadian composer Ana Sokolovi, jointly presented by Edmonton Opera and Toronto?s Queen of Puddings Theatre.

It is half opera, half music-theatre, an amalgam of singing and movement and rhythm and allusion, as hard to pin down as one of Beckett?s last plays.

The central premise is easily told. We are in the company of six young women, one of whom is about to get married. This is the equivalent of a wedding shower, a gathering of a group who have clearly grown up together, a kind of avant-garde singing version of a meeting of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

There is no story-line here, nor does there need to be. Instead, there are seven linked sections, each presenting some different aspect of that get-together: colouring the hair, recalling earlier childhood experiences, dressing the bride, and so on. Each section has its own clearly defined characteristic, but they flow seamlessly into each other, like a theatrical theme and variations.

That scenario is also rooted in the pre-wedding traditions of Sokolovic?s country of origin, Serbia, emphasized here by the quasi-folk costumes by Michael Gianfrancesco, red and blacks predominating, and the simple, occasionally symbolic, staging by Michael Cavanagh, a model of what one can achieve with basic resources.

The language is Serbian (with English surtitles), though often Sokolovic sets syllables or nonsense words. The emotions and the concept of the young bride being sent off to her new life, leaving childhood and friends behind, are universal, so you don?t need knowledge of the language to understand what is going on.

The music is, on the one hand, a clear descendant of the extended vocal techniques developed in the 1960s and 1970s, and in particular of Stockhausen?s seminal Stimmung, with which it shares the number of singers (six), the same emphasis on a pure, vibrato-less singing style, the same sense of ritual, and, at times, the sense of chords being built on the natural harmonics of a fundamental note.

On the other hand, there is the equally clear lineage of the Slavic choral tradition, with blocks of chords shifting over each other, and a regular sense of the interval of the minor seventh, that staple of Eastern European folk harmonies.

The result is at times extremely beautiful and at times vocally dramatic. The basic building blocks juxtapose those chords against rhythmic syllabic singing or vocalizations, and these are capable of a wide variety of expression, from thoughts about the best potential men in the village, to the young women recalling schoolyard pat-a-cake games that everyone will recognize.

Almost all is sung unaccompanied, though there are moments with the rhythm of a drum or the percussive sounds of the young women?s actions. There is also a subtle ting of a quiet little bell, so naturally part of the score, but necessarily serving to remind the singers of the pitch.

The finest moment is perhaps the haunting ending. The bride (poignantly sung by Jacqueline Woodley), now clothed in the silver of the wedding dress, is singing a song of longing and sadness at leaving one part of her life, and at the same time of hope for her new life.

I presume that vocal line is a genuine folk melody, but from underneath rises, so quiet at first, a wordless chord from the other women.

In that one moment one viscerally feels all the conflicting emotions, the sadness of parting, the thoughts of the friends knowing things will never be the same again, the fears and hopes of the bride, the potency of the rite of passage.

None of this would be possible without an ensemble that is absolutely secure vocally and dramatically, and this one is. Most of them have performed Svadba together since its premiere in 2011 (an exception is Edmonton?s Elizabeth Turnbull), and it shows in the surety of the vocal interaction ? which has the dramatic effect of suggesting they have, indeed, known each other since early childhood.

The work won the 2012 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Opera, and I can see why. It shows that opera is not just rooted in the past, but can be as modern (and in this case, in the traditions it presents, as ancient) as anything you are likely to see.

To supplement their more traditional fare with such contemporary works is a departure for Edmonton Opera, adding another dimension to the cultural life of our city. Long may it continue to do so.

Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F264/~3/8S6-yYZFPqA/story.html

chris herren jay z jennifer lawrence martin luther king jr patriots adele

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