FULL Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser (Bielawa) Santa Ana CA 2016
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser
- Composer: Bielawa Lisa
- Libretto: Erik Ehn
- Venue & Opera Company: Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, California
- Recorded: 2016
- Type: Movie
- Singers: Rowen Sabala, Laurie Rubin, Maria Lazarova, Gregory Purnhagen
- Conductor: Lisa Bielawa
- Orchestra: Kronos Quartet
- Chorus: San Francisco Girls Chorus, the Orange County School of the Arts Middle School Choir
- Stage Director: Charlie Otte
- Stage Designer: Greg Cotten
- Costume Designer: Christina Wright
Information about the Recording
- Published by: PBS
- Date Published: 2017
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: pbs FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser is an opera that considers the nature and uses of female hysteria through time, as witch-hunters, early psychiatrists, and modern artists variously define the condition. Based on composer Bielawa’s own research at Yale as a Literature major, then freely adapted and re-imagined by librettist Ehn, Vireo is a composite history of the way in which teenage-girl visionaries’ writings and rantings have been manipulated, incorporated, and interpreted by the communities of men surrounding them throughout history, from the European Dark Ages, to Salem Massachusetts, 19th-century France, the Surrealists in Paris, and contemporary performance art. Featuring arias for dying cows, infatuated students, disembodied ageless women, and a mysterious twin of Vireo herself, the opera provides a thoughtful, and sometimes humorous look at the universal issues of gender identity, perception, and reality.