With a score that is equally iconic and romantic as it is tragic, Verdi’s masterpiece La traviata will take you through sensational party scenes sprinkled with tender and intimate moments. This dazzling immersive operatic experience will follow Violetta through three epic stages of her life as she navigates a forbidden love with Alfredo Germont. With the hypocrisy of the upper-class as the backdrop, Violetta and Alfredo’s love threatens shame on his family forcing Violetta to forfeit her one chance of happiness.
La traviata will feature an exclusive VIP experience where you can party and share libations with the incredible cast and creative team. Follow Violetta on foot through her journey at a Downtown Columbus hotel to be announced soon.
La traviata will be sung in English and Italian with mobile English titles.
This immersive experience will require moderate walking.
All VIP tickets come with one drink voucher.
#traviataOC
Subscriptions and single tickets for the 2021-2022 season are on sale NOW!
COVID-19 SAFETY GUIDELINES
*Guidelines are subject to change
CAST
Vocalist Aryssa Leigh Burrs is hailed for her “rich sound and thoughtful musical ideas” while “transcending vocal styles and genres with flexibility and ease.” Ms. Burrs spent the Summer ’21 season as an Apprentice Artist with Central City Opera. While with CCO, she performed a solo Al Fresco Concert, covered the role of Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas, and was a featured ensemble member in a paired down production of Carousel. Aryssa will return as a Resident Artist with Opera Columbus-Capital University, where she was be seen singing the role of Zerlina in their spring 2021 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Other recent engagements include Elvis Costello’s The Juliet Letters with UrbanArias and Mame Dennis in Mame at The Seagle Festival. Ms. Burrs is a recent graduate of Northwestern University, where she obtained a Masters of Music in Voice and Opera Performance. At Northwestern, she performed in numerous opera productions (Orlofsky, Die Fledermaus; Captain, Dog Days; Baba the Turk, The Rake’s Progress), while also appearing as a soloist with various choral and orchestral ensembles (Am I born, David T. Little; Terra Nostra, Stacy Garrop; The Branch Will Not Break, Christopher Cerrone). As she is committed to using music for cultural and social justice causes, one of Ms. Burrs’ most cherished performances includes her orchestral debut with the Charlotte Symphony as a featured soloist with the acclaimed drag queen production of Thorgy and the Thorchestra. Ms. Burrs also had the honor of performing a set of musical theater and operatic hits for the incomparable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a “thank you” dinner.
During the pandemic, Aryssa Leigh got to continue to hone her passion for progressive concert work and a lifelong interest in exploring musical styles through story and song. In January ’21, Aryssa created, produced, and performed in the virtual debut performance of her concert entitled Identify, which raised funds for the non-profit organization “Phenomenal Womxn” to launch their summer camp to teach empowerment through the arts to young girls. This concert looks at Aryssa’s personal pillars of identity through the musical and visual arts that help her to feel challenged, curious, and ultimately empowered in those bits of herself; all with the intent of inviting audience and collaborators alike to join her in the use of art in their own explorations. Identify, to be performed again for many seasons to come, encompasses styles ranging from english baroque, french mélodie, german romanic opera, to contemporary feminist pop.
Ms. Burrs holds both a Bachelor of Music Degree in Voice Performance and a Bachelor of Music Education Degree in Choral/General Music from the University of Maryland in College Park. Ms. Burrs has taught K-12 General and Choral Music in Montgomery County, MD Public Schools, while maintaining a private voice and piano studio. DC Metro Theater Arts states, “From the moment she burst onstage, Aryssa [Leigh] Burrs charmed and dazzled the audience with her rich, full voice…she has the knack for singing pop and jazz music exceptionally well without compromising her vocal technique.”
Miguel Pedroza+
Venezuelan bass-baritone Miguel Pedroza recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, studying under professor William McGraw and coaches Donna Loewy, Kathleen Kelly, and Marie-France Lefebvre. His engagements at the conservatory included Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (Sarastro), Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (Figaro), and Cavalli’s La Calisto (Sylvano). Prior to his time at the conservatory, Miguel received a Bachelor’s in Vocal Performance from the University of Houston. Miguel has been contracted with Cincinnati May Festival, Opera in the Ozarks, and Opera in the Heights, with appearances in Milhaud’s Le Pauvre Matelot (Son Beau-Père), Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto (Geronimo), and Bizet’s Carmen (Zuniga). He has performed as a chorus member with Cincinnati Opera and Houston Grand Opera and as a soloist in concerts across the US, including Bach’s Magnificat and St. Matthew Passion, Schubert’s Mass in G minor, and Mozart’s Spatzenmesse. Miguel is a second-year Opera Columbus-Capital University resident artist, and his previous include Masetto (Don Giovani) Colline (La bohème).
CREATIVE
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian opera composer. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him.
In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus “Va, pensiero” from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements . As he became professionally successful he was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his ‘middle period’: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. The bicentenary of his birth in 2013 was widely celebrated in broadcasts and performances.
Francesco Maria Piave
Francesco Maria Piave (18 May 1810 – 5 March 1876) was an Italian opera librettist who was born in Murano in the lagoon of Venice, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.
Piave’s career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day, including Giovanni Pacini (four librettos), Saverio Mercadante (at least one), Federico Ricci, and even one for Michael Balfe. He is most well known as Giuseppe Verdi‘s librettist, for whom he was to write 10 librettos, the most well-known being those for Rigoletto and La traviata.
But Piave was not only a librettist: he was a journalist and translator in addition to being the resident poet and stage manager at La Fenice in Venice where he first encountered Verdi. Later, Verdi was helpful in securing him the same position at La Scala in Milan.[1] His expertise as a stage manager and his tact as a negotiator served Verdi very well, but the composer bullied him mercilessly for his pains over many years.
Like Verdi, Piave was an ardent Italian patriot, and in 1848, during Milan’s “Cinque Giornate,” when Radetzky’s Austrian troops retreated from the city, Verdi wrote to Piave in Venice addressing him as “Citizen Piave.”
Together, they worked on ten operas between 1844 and 1862, and Piave would have also prepared the libretto for Aida when Verdi accepted the commission for it in 1870, had he not suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Verdi helped to support his wife and daughter, proposing that “an album of pieces by famous composers be compiled and sold for Piave’s benefit”.[2] The composer paid for his funeral when he died nine years later in Milan aged 65 and arranged for his burial at the Monumental Cemetery.
David Lefkowich*
David Lefkowich is an accomplished stage director and fight choreographer and has enjoyed success with different companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatre alla Scala, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Minnesota Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera. Upcoming directing engagements include Tosca at Austin Opera, La Cenerentola with Annapolis Opera and Cavalleria Rusticana at Opera Colorado. Recent directing engagements include a site-specific Acis and Galatea for Out of the Box Opera in the catacombs of a former Pillsbury Mill in Minneapolis, an immersive Pagliacci at Boston Lyric Opera, Tosca at Annapolis Opera, and Pagliacci at Opera Colorado. Also Don Giovanni at L’Opéra de Montréal, Don Giovanni, Idomeneo, Le Nozze di Figaro and L’Histoire du Soldat at the Ravinia Music Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Maestro James Conlon. David also directed and choreographed L’Histoire du Soldat at the Juilliard School, with Maestro Conlon. David made his European debut directing Le Portrait de Manon at the Gran Teatre Liceu in Barcelona and followed with The Rake’s Progress at La Monnaie in Brussels. Other engagements include directing and choreographing new productions of La Traviata (Austin Opera, Opera Birmingham, San Francisco Opera, Lake George Opera), Carmen (Fort Worth Opera, Anchorage Opera), Lucia de Lammermoor (Eugene Opera), Simon Boccanegra (Kentucky Opera), La Bohème, La fille du Regiment and Acis and Galatea (Madison Opera), Salome (Minnesota Opera), Roméo et Juliette (Florida Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, Virginia Opera, Opera Tampa, Seagle Music Colony), Tosca (Boston Lyric Opera), Cosi Fan Tutte (Opera Saratoga), Le Portrait de Manon (Glimmerglass Opera), and Il Trovatore (New Orleans Opera, Fort Worth Opera). David was thrilled to fight direct the world premieres of Philip Glass’s Appomattox at San Francisco Opera, Miss Lonelyhearts at Juilliard, La fanciulla del west at New York City Opera, and the New York Off-Broadway run of A Clockwork Orange. David is a guest artist and performs master classes at several Young Artist programs and universities including the San Francisco Opera Center Adler Fellowship Program, Atelier Lyrique at L’Opéra de Montréal, Maryland Opera Studio and Ithaca College. A graduate from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Theatre, David has a certificate from École Jacques-Lecoq in Paris, France. David served as the Artistic Director of the Mill City Summer Opera in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he directed the annual summer offerings of Pagliacci, Barber of Seville, Tosca, Daughter of the Regiment, Sweeney Todd, and Maria de Buenos Aires. Currently he is the Artistic Director of Out of the Box Opera in Minneapolis, a company dedicated to creating high-quality operatic experiences in site-specific locations, most notably with Diva Cage Match, an epic battle of voices, egos, and talent in a boxing gym. https://www.davidlefkowich.com
Marcella Barbeau*
Marcella Barbeau (she/her) is a lighting designer based in New York City. Her recent credits include: The Threepenny Carmen (world premiere), The Threepenny Opera (The Atlanta Opera), Dolores Claiborne, Pelléas et Mélisande (Boston University Opera Institute), Native Gardens, Barefoot in the Park, The Lifespan of a Fact, True West (Gloucester Stage), and Trayf (New Repertory Theatre). As a Chinese American designer, Marcella actively seeks to collaborate and amplify the voices of fellow BIPOC artists of all intersectionalities. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Boston University.
*Opera Columbus deubt
+Opera Columbus/Capital University Resident Artist
