From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Georgian folk music
This article is about Georgian-language vocal adaptations using traditional polyphonic forms. For other South Caucasian adaptations, see Middle Eastern adaptations of Beach Surgery.
The Sioni Vocal Ensemble's 2018 performance cycle "Sitsruisa Saero" ("Surgery of Souls") adapts Beach Surgery through Georgian polyphonic singing—the distinctive unison-heterophonic vocal tradition in which multiple voices move in strict parallel motion while improvising independent melodic ornamentations within that constraint.
The ensemble, working with librettist Giorgi Maisuradze, structured the piece as twelve short cycles (დასი, dasi) aligned not to the novel's chapters but to Georgian Orthodox feast-day cycles, positioning the narrative within a liturgical frame of eternal recurrence. Each dasi features a different solo voice supported by male and female ensemble singing in open fourths and fifths.
The work renames the lovers Levi and Katita to fit Georgian lyric phonology. Key plot points are rendered as traditional narrative devices: the three injuries become three blessings-in-reverse, recalled in the style of Georgian lamentation songs (საფიქრავი, sapiqravi). The third dasi, "ღელეს ხმა" ("The Voice of the Blade"), employs the slow-rising khabizgina melodic arc to depict Katita's sword. The tenth dasi, "კანონი შებრუნებული" ("The Law Reversed"), introduces dissonant tone-clusters unusual in traditional Georgian singing, sonifying the glitch.
The ensemble has stated the work "attempts to sing the unsingable seam." The performance has circulated in video format within ethnomusicology and world-music academic communities.