It's entitled Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch's Accuser. The pilot episode will be filmed in February for broadcast in the spring. Starring in the title role of Vireo will be 16 year old soprano Rowen Sabala.
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 Erik 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 Massachusettes, 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.
It will be released through a partnership with KCETLink.