Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser, composed and conceived by Lisa Bielawa on a libretto by Erik Ehn and directed by Charles Otte, will be released as a double package on DVD and CD by Orange Mountain Music on February 28, 2019. Vireo is an opera in 12 episodes, created for television and online viewing. The opera removes the set limitations of a staged opera, visiting locations across the country – Alcatraz Prison, a monastery on the Hudson River, an abandoned train station in Oakland, the California Redwoods. An orchestra in the pit is replaced with world-class musicians on camera, inside the action. The eponymous heroine Vireo, played by Rowen Sabala, is a fourteen-year-old girl genius entangled in the historic obsession with female visionaries, as witch-hunters, early psychiatrists, and modern artists have defined them. Vireo was shot on location from New York’s Hudson River Valley to California’s Redwood forests.
