Wedding by the sea: Boston company debuts opera filmed on Truro beach
The beauty of Truro’s Ballston Beach, and how Nature can enhance life’s memorable milestones, are key parts of a newly available video production from Boston Lyric Opera.
“Svadba,” a one-act, 54-minute contemporary Serbian piece written by Ana Sokolovic, tells the story of the hours leading up to a young woman’s wedding. The opera was filmed on the coast of Truro in October, during a stretch of fortunately gorgeous fall weather.
In the film, the woman, her aunt and her bridal party prepare for the festivities and dance in a tiny cottage by the beach, while also dancing and holding ceremonies tied into the nearby waves, tides, sand and moonlight.
The streaming video of “Svadba” (the Serbian word for wedding) is now available through the company’s operabox.tv as the third piece for virtual audiences that the BLO has created during this pandemic time when people gathering in person has been a challenge. The company describes the completed piece that premiered Friday as a “new cinematic opera experience.”
The co-production with Opera Philadelphia could never be experienced inside a theater, anyway. The film marries Boston footage from August of a cast of six singers of the a cappella score — creating the music, words and sounds with voices and small instruments — with scene after luminous scene of dancing and interaction in the cottage and on the sand.
Guest conductor was Daniella Candillari, who has a Serbian background, as do others involved with the piece that includes text taken from Serbian poetry, Balkan folk music and other sources. The six actors who worked in Truro act out and dance the rituals and traditions surrounding a wedding, while the six singers filmed in dark clothing in a black box theater — so their faces and voices are fully the focus of their scenes — represent the ancestors passing on traditions at such a pivotal moment of the woman’s life.
Bradley Vernatter, the company’s acting general and artistic director, said in October that he was familiar with the Outer Cape area, so had suggested the “expansive views” of the beach as a backdrop for this production.
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Director Shura Baryshnikov and screenwriter Hannah Shepard, who are sisters, used the Ballston Beach setting at different times of day to lovely advantage to create the film’s serene and idyllic setting. The beach and the tides also offered a visual metaphor for the rite of passage happening to the characters, Baryshnikov noted.
“The beach was unbelievable,” the first-time film director told the Times in October. “You just can't beat having those exquisite skies as a backdrop. There’s no interior that can compare to that. … We were just incredibly fortunate to end up with the location that suited the story so beautifully. Hannah's words just kind of jumped off the page with this location.”
The finished “Svadba” film shows cast members creating some of the beach setting, such as rolling out an Oriental rug and creating bouquets. Vernatter said last fall that the cottage owner was open to redecorating for the film shoot, and the camerawork of the party scenes make the cottage look more spacious than it seemed in an October visit.
This collaborative “Svadba” production is part of what Vernatter said was a quick pivot to taking opera to online audiences — and expanding what opera could be and who it could reach — after the pandemic began almost two years ago. “We put a lot of effort into finding that intersection between the core musical and artistic values of opera, but also really celebrating the core qualities of film and cinema, and not apologizing for not being able to do something live,” Vernatter said.
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How to watch Boston Lyric Opera's 'Svadba'
“Svadba” can be seen on BLO's operabox.tv and the Opera Philadelphia Channel (operaphila.tv) streaming services for on-demand viewing for $15. Both services are available on branded apps found on Apple, Android, Google, Amazon and Roku platforms.
Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Boston Lyric Opera releases Svadba filmed on Ballston Beach Cape Cod
