Tenor of the season

Past success and popular demand have led Victory Hall Opera to bring back its outdoor acoustic series for a third year. Soundflight 3, hosted in the natural amphitheater of the Quarry Gardens at Schuyler, returns with four performances in early June. The series also brings virtuoso VHO tenor Victor Ryan Robertson back to the commonwealth. […]

Song and social advance

There might be a few local residents who haven’t yet heard of Victory Hall Opera. But rest assured that opera aficionados nationwide—from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest—have begun to take notice of the Charlottesville-based company. Victory Hall is turning heads thanks to its embrace of cutting-edge productions, like its latest, a world premiere […]

PICK: UNSUNG

Phoning in the overture: When Victory Hall Opera’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata was canceled, the cast turned to their iPhones—but not for pandemic-induced doom scrolling. Instead, they collaborated on filming UNSUNG, the first feature film made by and about opera singers. In it, the cast navigates the challenges of life during a pandemic, and […]

ARTS Pick: Armida

Tale spin: Miriam Gordon-Stewart and Victory Hall Opera take on Hadyn’s 1784 opera Armida with a fresh perspective. The original is a love story of a crusader and enchantress, and Armida’s mission is to seduce, while the soldier’s is to resist. Gordon-Stewart’s version tells the story of an opera troupe “through the lens of a […]

Hemings as heroine: Experimental opera explores the life of Jefferson’s mistress

The word “opera” sometimes comes with some preconceived notions attached. It might bring to mind complex stories fraught with drama and murder, created by long-dead composers. Unless you’re intimately familiar with the art form, it may also seem less than relevant to modern society, a type of entertainment that belongs to previous generations. Such an […]