When international opera singers Miriam Gordon-Stewart and Brenda Patterson arrived in Charlottesville with plans to launch a small, innovative opera company, they were surprised by how receptive the town was. Area residents bought tickets for some pretty off-beat stuff from Victory Hall Opera.
There was, for example, an opera performed for people who are deaf. They could follow the plot through American sign language and feel the vibrations of the music. Another focused on the struggles of fat people, and a third told the story of Sally Hemmings – an enslaved woman who had six children with Thomas Jefferson.
“We were the first performing arts organization to produce a fully-staged work inside the house, and the work was called Monticello overheard. Basically the audience sat in the entrance hall of Monticello, and we performed in the rooms surrounding them – coming and going through the halls," says Artistic Director Miriam Gordon-Stewart.
She also recalls a show staged at the 40-acre site in Nelson County where – for decades – men quarried soap stone.
During the pandemic, Victory Hall produced a video about singers surviving in a time of isolation, and this week the company will premiere a documentary about YAPS.
“It’s a shortening of Young Artists Programs," Gordon-Stewart explains, "but it’s also the colloquial term in opera for young singers.”
They come into the field at a time when opera is struggling to attract an audience and funding.
“Every small arts company in the country is in a certain state of upheaval at the moment over the disappearance of the NEA -- National Endowment for the Arts – and the National Endowment for Humanities. Those two have amounted to 15-20% of our operating budget.”
But, Gordon Stewart says, these young singers are determined.
“Opera singers keep being born. God keeps making opera singers for some reason, and there is no shortage of passion, no shortage of willingness to sacrifice, willingness to hustle.”
Ria Ipa, for example, dressed in a hoodie and jeans, then went to a church to record. She says opera is like a religious experience, and this performance was inspired by her favorite heavy metal band.
She shared the recording on TikTok.
“I get home. I open my phone and there’s like after like after like, comment after comment after comment," she says with a chuckle. "I see the numbers going up, up, up, and I’m like ‘Oh no! What is happening?’”
And with award-winning musical films like Wicked, Emilia Perez, LalaLand and Rent, Gordon Stewart says these younger artists may combine opera with other professional opportunities.
“Gen Z is much less likely to draw distinctions between different genres of music -- certainly reluctant to limit themselves to just one style of music.”
Gordon-Stewart hopes that, in spite of federal cuts, Victory Hall Opera can continue to employ young artists, and keep putting singers at the center of its creative choices, letting them offer even more than their voices.
YAPS will premiere at Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill Theater this Saturday at 7. Tickets are on sale at VictoryHallOpera.org.
