Paola Prestini's Makes Debut in OCEANIC VERSES, 6/23 & 25

At 36, Paola Prestini has already forged a singular and celebrated path in new music. Both through her Production Company, VisionIntoArt, and as a composer, she has garnered praise from fellow artists, presenters and critics. Osvaldo Golijov has described Prestini's music as "wrenching and tender and luminous and pure and exuberant: always vivid and always generous." Terry Riley has called it "music [that] speaks from the heart and inspires," and The New York Times has called it "radiant" and "amorously evocative."

To be sure, Prestini's multimedia opera Oceanic Verses is the most ambitious undertaking of her career to date, and the one that best reveals her sensibility. With her collaborators-including the film artist Ali Hossaini, the librettist Donna Di Novelli and the director Kevin Newbury-Prestini has expanded the work from a 35-minute oratorio to an evening-length opera commissioned by VisionIntoArt and produced by her frequent cohort, Beth Morrison Projects in association with Washington Chorus and Trinity Wall Street.

This summer, the Kennedy Center and the River to River festival will present the rolling World Premiere-the concert version in D.C.; the multimedia concert in New York-tonight, June 23 at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater and June 25 at the PACE Schimmel Center Theater, respectively. In advance, a residency and preview performances have taken place at Mass MoCA, May 13-18, to be followed by a showing in the OPERA America Conference's New Works Sampler, June 13 in Philadelphia.

Set against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, Oceanic Verses follows the stories of four characters united by their desire to unearth and uncover the past. A meditation on fading civilizations, the journey is led by an archaeologist, (improviser Helga Davis) whose investigation of immigration leads her to a Sailor (folksinger Claudio Prima) searching for lost songs; a Peasant (soprano Nancy Allen Lundy) seeking a better life for her future children; and a Soldier (Christopher Burchett) searching for a good meal.

Each of the four characters has an onscreen abstraction of his/her essence or inner life, projected throughout the performance. In the film, the celebrated Italian dancer Emio Greco plays the Soldier, and local Salentine actors play the Peasant. Claudio Prima and Helga Davis play the on-screen, as well as the on-stage, versions of their characters.

Rather than tell a story in the manner of cinema, Hossaini directed the performers in the film to act in short abstract sequences that he juxtaposed as poetic counterpoint to what unfolds onstage. These sequences are part of a larger "video environment" that recreates the atmosphere of the Mediterranean and immerses the opera's players and audience in the folkloric landscape that inspired it. Hossaini's contribution amplifies the presence of the main characters while giving Oceanic Verses a broad sense of place that is impossible with a traditional set.

Along with the principals performers and their on-screen counterparts, Oceanic Verses features the 12-piece ensemble NOVUS NY: the contemporary music ensemble of Trinity Wall Street and the 40-person Washington Chorus. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy will join the company for the New York premiere. Maestro Julian Wachner conducts.

In addition to its unconventional format, Oceanic Verses had an unusual genesis. The piece was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in 2009 and began as an operatic tableau of rituals spanning Prestini's Italian heritage. This shorter concert version of the work paid homage to Italian folk music throughout the ages, from the Salento, Genoa and Sardinia regions of the county. Inspired by five millennia of folk music-and the work of American ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax-Prestini's score combines field recordings she made in Salento with reconstructions she undertook of ancient music and original music in which she echoes contemporary Italian singers Fabrizio D'Andre and Robert Licci.

Donna Di Novelli joined the team as Prestini began to enlarge and form the work into an opera. Di Novelli structured the piece by weaving her own original work together with a selection of archetypal Italian texts: from songs and poems written by Vittoria Colonna, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Dante Alighieri and Aleandro Aleardi. The opera is sung in a variety of dialects including Griko, Genoese, and Sardinian.

The Oceanic Verses creative team also includes Emio Greco | PC (Choregraphy), S. Katy Tucker (Video and Projection Design), Vita Tzykun (Costume and Set Design) and Allen Hahn (Lighting Design).

In the overall work, the ocean surrounds and binds the main characters' tales. It serves as metaphor for the expanse that can both separate cultures while simultaneously connecting them.

Oceanic Verses was an official selection at the 2010 New York City Opera VOX festival and the 2011 21c Liederabend festival at the Kitchen. It has been developed through residencies at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Sound Res, the Hermitage and Mass MoCA.

Watch the trailer: https://vimeo.com/27426469