Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Wild Space's Breathtaking High Wire Act

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Photo Credit: Mark Frohna

Some things need to be done again. The extraordinary co-production by Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Wild Space Dance Company of composer Ana Sokolovic’s ferociously challenging a capella opera Svadba-Wedding shouldn’t disappear after three weeknight shows for a combined audience of maybe 300. The 12 young women performers worked for four months, unusually long in opera, to understand, memorize, master and bring this crazily original piece about a girl on her wedding night to the fullest life it’s ever had since it appeared in 2011, giving the chamber piece a fully realized site-specific theatre production in a popular Milwaukee wedding venue. It was like watching a breathtaking high wire act. After taking bows, the performers on opening night began to laugh and impulsively hug each other, clearly thrilled, like the audience, by what had just transpired.

The audience sat comfortably with strangers at large round tables in the long Great Hall of Best Place, where Captain Pabst once kept his office. Huge windows at both ends allowed natural light to illuminate the playful early scenes, and to darken with dusk as the mood turned first drunken, then increasingly serious, spiritual, mythic, and performers began to carry candles and the theatre lighting of AntiShadows LLC began to work its magic. Six singers and six dancers poured from Pabst’s office at the start, a dozen best girlfriends excited that one of them would wed tomorrow. Sokolovic’s libretto is spare and representative, fortunately, since it’s sung entirely in Serbian. Much of what’s vocalized are the kinds of emotive non-verbal noises we make instinctively, but they’re delivered in complex rhythms and dissonant harmonies, often at great speed. There’s no accompaniment. Nothing cues the singers in pitch, yet they break out in multiple harmonies. Music director Adam Qutaishat lightly conducted from ever-changing spots as singers and dancers moved all around, but I rarely saw the singers watch him. Instead, they focused on acting the scenes, sensing when to start and stop with the same ensemble awareness as the dancers who moved to music that came more in waves than in counts.

Jill Anna Ponasik directed. Debra Loewen choreographed. With great warmth, intelligence and power, Lydia Rose Eiche as the bride dressed for her wedding, sang a moving farewell—first alone, with frightened high notes, then joined by her friends’ voices quietly supporting her from darkened corners. Trailing rose petals, she left to a new life.