Come watch Lisa Bielawa's award-winning made-for-TV opera, Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. It stars a time-traveling teen genius accused of witchcraft! Q&A with composer Lisa Bielawa! Snacks provided.

The award-winning composer’s groundbreaking opera, Vireo, is the winner of the 2015 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Multimedia Award and was awarded a prestigious MAP Fund Grant for 2016 through Grand Central Art Center, and were nominated for the 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards.

The eponymous heroine Vireo, played by soprano Rowen Sabala, is a 14-year-old girl genius entangled in the historic obsession with female visionaries, as witch-hunters, early psychiatrists, and modern artists have defined them. Based on Bielawa’s own research at Yale, 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, all the way to 19th century France and contemporary performance art, Vireo provides a thoughtful, sometimes-humorous look at the universal issues of gender identity, perception, and reality.

Vireo features the work of over 350 musicians including opera star Deborah Voigt, violinist Jennifer Koh ’97, cellist Joshua Roman, mezzo-sopranos Laurie Rubin ’01, Maria Lazarova and Kirsten Sollek, baritone Gregory Purnhagen, tenor Ryan Glover, drummer Matthias Bossi, soprano Emma MacKenzie and in the title role of Vireo, teenage soprano Rowen Sabala.

Additionally, the opera features the talents of notable groups and organizations from around the country including Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Magik*Magik Orchestra, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, PARTCH, the Orange County School of the Arts Middle School Choir, and many, many more.