PERFORMANCE: Sun & Sea Opera
Sun & Sea Opera is a visually compelling total work of art that vents climate anxiety while offering a modernized reinterpretation of opera. The multidisciplinary team of creators is led by Lithuanian filmmaker and director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer Vaiva Grainytė, and artist and composer Lina Lapelytė. The performance is amplified by a cast of local performers.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Kiasma Museum Archive
The performance of “Sun & Sea Opera” (Golden Lion for the Best National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in May 2019), is presented in Helsinki as part of “ARS22-Living encounters”. The opera opens with a seemingly carefree vignette of vacationers having fun – or desperately trying to have fun – on a sandy beach. The miscellaneous assembly of characters sing their thoughts aloud, sharing stories about their lives and their anxiety about the state of the world. The most poignant moment is when the chorus sings in unison about their concern for the sea. In the end, the atmosphere on the staged beach is anything but cheerful. “Sun & Sea” is a visually compelling total work of art that vents climate anxiety while offering a modernized reinterpretation of opera. The multidisciplinary team of creators is led by Lithuanian filmmaker and director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer Vaiva Grainytė, and artist and composer Lina Lapelytė. The performance is amplified by a cast of local performers. In Helsinki the local choir is Lempikuoro. Outwardly the events unfolding on the beach seem undramatic by operatic standards, but the intensity is heightened by the powerful performance delivered by the singers, as well as the content of the lyrics: the songs are about real threats to life on earth. Climate change is a complex subject to narrativize because the cold, hard facts of science are difficult to translate into touching human stories. While raising highly topical questions, Sun & Sea expresses humanity’s confused state as we teeter between panic and indifference, paradoxically both victims and villains of the climate crisis. Though the opera is staged in leisurely harmony, and the performers sing about mundane existence, worry, and boredom, the libretto’s contents darkly remark on Earth’s deterioration. Their solo arias and group harmonies address the causes and physical impacts of climate change and topics including the sun, the tide, ocean pollution, environmental threats, and extreme weather events, such as the whitening of the Great Barrier Reef and Easter-like weather during Christmas. The opera premiered at the Vilnius National Gallery of Art in 2017. It was rewritten from Lithuanian to English for the Venice Biennale. The production was staged in the Marina Militare, within Venice’s Castello area and apart from the main Biennale events in the Giardini and Arsenale. The production immediately faced financial issues, lacking the funds to continue even a weekly performance for the duration of the Biennale after its preview week. The productions costs ran about US$3/minute for eight hours of daily looped performances, eventually leading to reductions in operating hours. A crowdfunding campaign, buoyed by the performance winning the exhibition’s top national prize, ensured a weekly performance for the remainder of the six-month Biennale. The show ultimately ran during the Biennale’s opening week and on Saturdays thereafter.
Download the Sun-and-Sea_libretto
Team: Concept and development: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, Director and set designer: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Librettist: Vaiva Grainytė, Composer and musical direction: Lina Lapelytė, Curator: Lucia Pietroiusti, Libretto translator: Rimas Uzgiris, Singers: Svetlana Bagdonaitė, Aliona Alymova, Marco Cisco, Nabila Dandara, Claudia Graziadei, Sandro Hähnel, Lucas Lopes Pereira, Eglė Paškevičienė, Vytautas Pastarnokas, Salomėja Petronytė, Kalliopi Petrou, Annapaola Trevenzuoli, Elisabetta Trevenzuoli, Performers: Raminta Barzdžiukienė, Vincentas Korba, Jonas Statkevičius, Local choir: Lempikuoro, Live soundtrack: Magdalena Kozlovskaja, Sound engineer: Marius Venskevičius, Tour manager: Aušra Simanavičiūtė , Production manager: Erika Urbelevič, Technical director: Lique Van Gerven, Principal producer: Neon Realism, Commissioner (Sun & Sea (Marina), Venice, 2019): Rasa Antanavičiūtė
Photo: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, Sun & Sea (Marina), 2019, © the Artists, Photo: Andrej Vasilenko
Info: Merikaapelihalli, The Cable Factory, Kaapeliaukio 3, Helsinki, Finland, Duration: 10-28/8/2022, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00 (Performance duration 55 min), https://kiasma.fi/
