Singers create documentary film “UNSUNG”: A moving time capsule for the arts during COVID-19

Following the cancellation of a planned production of Verdi’s La Traviata, groundbreaking chamber opera company Victory Hall Opera pivoted fast. Artistic Director Miriam Gordon-Stewart Zoom-called the cast one day in June with an exciting challenge: to create a movie filmed only on iPhones, in their own cities, under Gordon-Stewart’s remote direction.

“When the pandemic brought the world of opera to a screaming halt, something interesting began to happen,” says Gordon-Stewart. “While bigger companies felt unable to create any kind of artistic offering, smaller companies took the lead, and some truly innovative ideas began to surface.”

Starring Rachelle Durkin, Carlton Ford, Victor Ryan Robertson, Brenda Patterson and Matthew Burns, UNSUNG is a documentary film, created by the singers themselves under the direction of Gordon-Stewart. As these members of the Traviata cast are cut off from their calling, they face some of the hardest choices of their lives. How to pay the bills? How to provide for their children? How to find artistic courage in the face of industry collapse and social unrest?

“Our priorities were: to call upon the singers' creativity in creating a collaborative film, and to feature a high-quality soundtrack that could capture the fullness of their voices,”

says Brenda Patterson, cast member and co-founder of VHO. The decision was made to bring the cast to Charlottesville, VA to make a socially-distanced recording of La Traviata, with the aid of Grammy-Award-winning Sound Producer Blanton Alspaugh (Soundmirror, Inc.) The opera became the soundtrack to the cast’s stories in UNSUNG, the music they carry within themselves.

 In one of the film’s most moving sequences, the singers and instrumentalists gather in a rural barn to rehearse for the recording, having been shut out of other venues due to the pandemic.  Against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they make music for the first time in over a year and the last time for the foreseeable future.

UNSUNG will be released online on February 27, 2021 as part of VHO’s FLUX21 Season. The film will remain available at victoryhallopera.org for a limited time following the premiere. The soundtrack recording (a new, live recording of a chamber version of the opera, arranged by Brenda Patterson) will be released on iTunes and as a CD along with the film. 

Gordon-Stewart: “It is crucial that these stories be heard: the stories of singers whose calling and life's work has been banned in the time of COVID, with singing suddenly feared as a virus-spreading danger. For them, being a singer is an identity, one that cannot be turned off, just because the music stops."

WATCH THE OFFICIAL TRAILER