PilotOnline.com
Page Laws
January 30, 2026
A white woman and a woman she enslaved joined forces to spy on the Confederate White House.
It’s “I Spy” — the 1960s TV show about a Black spy partnered with a white one — but so much more historical, locally significant and … well … operatic.
“Why isn’t Virginia Opera doing it first?”
That was conductor Adam Turner’s reaction on seeing the world premiere of “Intelligence” at Houston Grand Opera in 2023, he said at a recent pre-show panel of historians from Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities. Turner immediately set out to ensure that Virginia Opera would at least be the second company to perform Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s work concerning a pro-Union, white patrician woman named Elizabeth Van Lew and her suspiciously well-educated Black slave Mary Jane Bowser (though Bowser later used a half dozen other last names).