Orpheus & Erica
How far would you go to preserve a life?
Orpheus & Erica: a Deaf opera
featuring Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
& a new play in ASL by Miriam Gordon-Stewart
with Willy Conley & poetry by Gregory Orr
Co-directed by Alek Lev & Miriam Gordon-Stewart
Conducted by Christine Brandes
with the UVA Chamber Singers led by Chorusmaster Michael Slon
Starring Brenda Patterson, John Maucere, Jennifer Zetlan, Amber Zion, Chuanyuan Liu, WAWA Snipe. Accompanied by chamber orchestra and performed in Italian & ASL with English supertitles.
THIS SHOW WAS PERFORMED LIVE IN MARCH 2023.
THE VIEWING PERIOD FOR THE FULL-LENGTH ONLINE FILM HAS NOW ENDED.
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Orpheus & Erica is made possible by grants from: The Jefferson Trust, the Joseph & Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Founder’s Award from The Music Academy of the West, the UVA Directors of DEI, a UVA Arts Enhancement Grant from the Office of the Vice-Provost for the Arts, and the UVA ASL Program. We are also grateful for the support of The Gassmann Fund for Innovation in Music, Civic Access, the UVA McIntire Dept. of Music, and Community Partner Speak! Language Center.
When a young couple plans their life together, they cannot foresee the gathering clouds. As Nature inevitably exerts her will, they seek more and more drastic measures and attempt to defy mortality.
VHO unites singers from such houses as the Metropolitan Opera and the radiant chorus of UVA's Chamber Singers with stars of Deaf theater & film, in an unprecedented theatrical event. This fully-staged production blends the beauty of opera & ASL, in a fascinating retelling of the Orpheus myth that asks: how far would you go to preserve a life?
