Photo Flash: First Look at Ana Sokolovic's SVADBA-WEDDING at SF Opera Lab

SF Opera Lab presents an exuberant new production of composer Ana Sokolovic'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. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the production below!

SVADBA-WEDDING, composed by Montreal-based Ana Sokolovic, 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, Sokolovic 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.

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 byAlexander V. Nichols and costume design is by Kristi Johnson. Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess are co-music directors of SVADBA-WEDDING.

For more information about SF Opera Lab, visit sfoperalab.com.

Photo Credit: Stefan Cohen/San Francisco Opera

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