{"id":65721,"date":"2013-11-12T04:31:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T02:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=65721"},"modified":"2016-11-26T13:37:48","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T12:37:48","slug":"philhadelphia-operasvadba-wedding-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/philhadelphia-operasvadba-wedding-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Opera:”Svadba-Wedding”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia Opera, FringeART, Stagione Lirica 2013 \/2014
\n<\/em>“SVADBA-WEDDING”
\n<\/strong>Testo e musica\u00a0 di Ana Sokolovi\u0107<\/strong>
\nMilica <\/em>JACQUELINE WOODLEY
\nDanica <\/em>SHANNON MERCER
\nLena <\/em>LAURA ALBINO
\nZora <\/em>VIRGINIA HATFIELD
\nNada <\/em>ANDREA LUDWIG
\nLjubica <\/em>KRISZTINA SZAB\u00d3
\nDirettore D\u00e1irine N\u00ed<\/strong> Mheadhra<\/strong>
\nRegia Marie-Jos\u00e9e Chartier
\n<\/strong>Scene e costumi Michael Gianfrancesco<\/strong>
\nLuci Kimberly Purtell<\/strong>
\nPhiladelphia, 3 novembre 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0 hipster Brooklyn, to Toronto, and Philadelphia there is much \u2018buzz\u2019\u00a0 among young American composers<\/strong> about that \u201c..most expensive and impractical of art forms\u201d: opera. Opera companies are supporting efforts to bring new life to an old form and new young audiences to the old standbys. Major theaters like the Met with it\u2019s Two Boys <\/em>provide the high profile productions, but\u00a0 it is the smaller companies, and \u201cIndies\u2019(Independents) who supply creative ferment, trying to find the musical alchemy that turns present day sounds and stories into that exciting synthesis known as opera.\u00a0 But where does that alchemy come from? Composer Ana <\/strong>Sokolovi\u0107<\/strong><\/strong> seeks to brew it from her Serbian heritage, using not only the vocal styles of her native culture but in Svadba-Wedding, the rituals as well. Here, it is a female ritual,\u00a0 Bridal Shower which traditionally takes place the entire night before a Balkan Wedding when the Bride\u2019s girlfriends prepare her for her upcoming nuptials, doing her hair, bath, gown, chattering, reflecting and playing.Commissioned and produced in Canada at Toronto\u2019s Queen of Puddings Musical Theater, the Philadelphia Opera in cooperation with FringeArt has brought the production virtually intact, for its Opera In the City Series to FringeArt\u2019s small and newly renovated theater-space.
\nIdeal for such a venue with six a cappella women-3 high voice and 3 low, the piece is 90 minutes long in seven vignettes.<\/strong> Conducted from a roped off audience seat by Musical Director D\u00e1irine N\u00ed<\/strong> Mheadhra<\/strong> the music is true to its vignette form, with short and distinct sections and styles.\u00a0 Complex and very well crafted, Sukolovic alternates between rhythmic deconstructed speech outbursts, close modal harmonies, and some haunting monodic tunes. The piece opens with the piercing “call” style of singing\u00a0 which harks back to the Serbian tradition of calling over the hills in the north. The soloists sing the close modal harmonies extraordinarily well in tune and with remarkable clarity, textual and rhythmic accent. Ms.Sokolovi\u0107 deconstructs the Serbian text using rhythmic repeated syllabic outbursts and plosive Slavic consonants to effectively portray the girls’ energy and sometimes comic excitement. To the non Serbian, at least, the language is very well used and executed by composer and ensemble. These often alternate with the closely harmonized chant like modal sections whose many dissonances had purpose and direction, if not resolution. The third compositional element is the Gregorian\u00a0 like chant which seemed to embody the ritual of which the women are all a part.\u00a0 Sokolovi\u0107\u00a0 ends several scenes with a deft dramatic touch, and the final scene starts with an affecting aria for the Bride which develops into a strong chorale.
\nThe vocal style also recalls to the old traditions of both northern and southern Serbia<\/strong>. The piercing call of the north alternates with the oriental\u201d (the composer\u2019s word in a radio interview)-Byzantine\/Arabic trills and warbles of the south. The singing is mostly with little or no vibrato in the \u2018early music\u2019 style of Medieval and Renaissance singing. The composer in the same radio interview likens these trills to those of Monteverdi, who she thinks may have taken them from the same source. And perhaps we should look to Monteverdi, who took the newborn Renaissance art form to almost instant maturity and began the Baroque era which saw opera\u2019s first great flowering, to understand its essence.\u00a0 And its essence is the voice, but not just the voice telling a story, but a unique identifiable voice and character set apart from the mass. The drama and emotions in these voices is what sets opera apart from other musical forms\u00a0 involving singing. Monteverdi began the emergence of the individual from the collective in music.
\nBut most elements of Svadba-Wedding<\/em> point in the other direction.<\/strong> The preparations are all in aid of the Bride leaving her friends and individual life to participate in a ritual. And what is a wedding if not a celebration of the survival of the tribe through propagation? As the Bride’s final and only aria seems to suggest, this Bridal Shower Night is an observance of the subsuming of \u00a0an individual into the collective. Whether greater or lesser, it is the opposite of the musical form which was born in 17th century Florence in which the individual \u00a0is distinct from the mass. In contrast to Orfeo, who tries to bring his wife out of the world of the non-living, Sokolovic\u2019s Bride seems to be leaving the world of the living for an unknown realm. Extraordinarily well crafted and superbly executed by the singers under the direction of Music Director D\u00e1irine N\u00ed Mheadhra and atmospherically staged by director Marie-Jos\u00e9e Chartier<\/strong> along with elegantly simple costumes and lighting by Michael Gianfrancesco<\/strong> and\u00a0 Kimberly Putell,<\/strong> it is nonetheless more of a secular cantata. A welcome female meditation on one of the central institutions of the species, it lacks the dramatic structure and above all the Voice to be called Opera. Orfeo enters the Underworld, but his triumph is\u00a0 that he emerges from it. Sokolovi\u0107\u2019s Bride is travelling the other way.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia Opera, FringeART, Stagione Lirica 2013 \/2014 “SVADBA-WEDDING” Testo e musica\u00a0 di Ana Sokolovi\u0107 Milica JACQUELINE WOODLEY Danica […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":60847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8916,8913,9354,8915,8914,145,10521,8912],"class_list":["post-65721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-ana-sokolovic","tag-dairine-ni-mheadhra","tag-foreign-readers","tag-marie-josee-chartier","tag-michael-gianfrancesco","tag-opera-lirica","tag-philadelphia-opera","tag-svadba-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}