NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Through countless hours of practice and prep work, Virginia Opera got ready to show Aida. Then the COVID pandemic happened, shutting it down in March 2020. Six years later, they are finally bringing opening night of Aida to Harrison Opera House.

“We’d been rehearsing for like, six or seven weeks,” said Adam Turner, Virginia Opera artistic Director and Chief Conductor. “We were all set to go, then on that Friday, one week before the opening night, we had to shut down.”

For director Adam Turner, finally bringing Aida back is a huge moment. In the world of operas, this is one of the big ones.

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NORFOLK, Va. — Singers Deborah Nansteel and Grant Youngblood join Coast Live to discuss Virginia Opera’s production of “Aida,” bringing the timeless Egyptian tragic romance to life with a stunning rendition of Verdi’s grand spectacle.

Watch the interview here!

From a young age, new Virginia Opera director of development Jacquelyn VandenPlas was enthralled with music and the arts.

“I’ve always been in love with music,” VandenPlas said. “When I was about 5 years old, my mother played an Ella Fitzgerald record for me. I immediately fell in love with jazz music, and to this day, Ella Fitzgerald is my favorite artist. I distinctly remember feeling the music and thinking that she wasn’t just singing notes but singing from her heart. I knew from a young age that I wanted to do that.”

VandenPlas started piano lessons shortly after hearing that record. She would later expand her musical prowess into singing, eventually ending up at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in vocal performance.

After college, VandenPlas took her musical talents to the education sector, where she taught piano and vocals and directed choir.

VandenPlas’s husband is in the military, which has taken them all over the country the past 16 years. They have lived in several states, including New York, South Carolina, and most recently Hawaii.

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Aida holds a unique place in Virginia Opera’s history. The company first produced the beloved opera to open its 2011-2012 Season, and it was scheduled to return in March 2020 before the pandemic forced a cancellation just one week before opening. This spring’s performances mark a long-anticipated homecoming for one of opera’s most enduring works.

“Verdi’s Aida represents one of the pinnacles of all opera—celebrated for its grandeur and spectacle, but even more so for its overwhelming vocal power and orchestral splendor,” said Turner. “It’s especially exciting and meaningful to be able to re-mount this monumental work following the heartbreaking cancellation during the early days of COVID. It’s a privilege for all of us at Virginia Opera to bring back Aida and provide audiences an artistic highlight of the season.”

The production is directed by Joachim Schamberger, who also serves as Set and Projection Designer. Schamberger previously collaborated with Virginia Opera as Stage Director and Projection Designer for Wagner’s The Valkyrie (2022) and Siegfried (2023). While Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” operas were performed with a more modern symbolic exploration, Verdi’s Aida will be presented in a traditional fashion, blending traditional staging with modern technology in a universally compelling way.

The cast is led by soprano Indira Mahajan in the title role of Aida. Mahajan previously appeared with Virginia Opera in The Marriage of Figaro (1999) and Don Giovanni (2001) and has been praised as a “strongly centered, richly textured soprano.” Of her portrayal of Aida with Dayton Opera, critics wrote, “Mahajan’s ‘O patria mia’ was a most riveting rendition of this reverie for her beautiful country…the heartbreaking line ‘mai più’ resonated into every ear and heart.”

Tenor Jonathan Burton sings the role of Radamès, returning to Virginia Opera after his acclaimed performance as Pinkerton in the company’s 2024 production of Madama Butterfly. Reviewing his Radamès with Sarasota Opera, critics noted that Burton “showed his heroic bona fides… tackling ‘Celeste Aida’—one of the most tortuous arias in the repertoire—with clarion tone, easy projection, and ringing top notes.”

Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel makes her Virginia Opera mainstage debut as Amneris. Nansteel has previously performed the role with Opera Grand Rapids and Finger Lakes Opera, bringing depth and dramatic intensity to the conflicted Egyptian princess.

Bass Ricardo Lugo returns to Virginia Opera as Ramfis, having appeared in Turandot (2017), Das Rheingold and La Bohème (2021), The Valkyrie (2022), Siegfried (2023), and Don Giovanni (2024). Of his earlier performances, The Virginian-Pilot wrote, “Ricardo Lugo’s huge bass perfectly fits Timur, the blind, banished king of Tartary.”

Bass Sergio Martinez makes his Virginia Opera mainstage debut as the King. OnStage Pittsburgh praised Martinez for a voice of “cavernous resonance and carrying power.”

Rounding out the cast are current Herndon Foundation Emerging Artists Maggie Kinabrew as the Priestess and Daniel Esteban Lugo as the Messenger.

Aida opens at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk on March 13, with an additional performance on March 15, before moving to the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond on March 20 and 22. The Richmond Symphony provides the orchestra for this production.

Tickets and additional information are available at vaopera.org.

For press inquiries, please contact:
Amanda Ivy
Director of Marketing, Virginia Opera
757-213-4547 · Amanda.ivy@vaopera.org

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About Virginia Opera
Virginia Opera, the official opera company of the Commonwealth of Virginia, is one of the finest regional opera companies in the nation and is the only company to perform regularly in three separate main stage venues: the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, the Carpenter Theatre at the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond, and the Center for the Arts at George Mason University in Fairfax. Organized in 1974, Virginia Opera is respected nationwide for the identification and presentation of the finest young artists, for the musical and dramatic integrity of its productions, and for the ingenuity and variety of its education and outreach programs.

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During the past several decades, American opera has seen an outpouring of new works that blend eclectic musical styles with uniquely American themes. “Intelligence,” which premiered in 2023, is evidence that America’s golden age of opera is still upon us.

The cast featured world-class vocal artists with equally notable acting ability.

Inspired by real events, composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer recount the story of two Civil War spies who risk their lives to save the Union. Plantation owner and secret abolitionist Elizabeth van Lew (Mezzo-Soprano Ashley Dixon) and the enslaved Mary Jane Bowser (Soprano Jacqueline Echols McCarley) work together to infiltrate the home of Jefferson Davis. Once inside, Bowser collects intelligence on confederate troop movements, unsuspected by the home’s residents because they wrongly assume that she is illiterate. Her work is effective, and the tide of the war turns, but not before other deeply buried secrets come to light reflecting the complexities of life in a time and place built on the brutal injustice of slavery.

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The opera focuses on an enslaved woman and an anti-slavery white woman who collaborated in spying for the Union in Richmond during the Civil War.

There is a historical nugget behind the plot and leading characters of Intelligence, which was given its East Coast premiere by Virginia Opera last weekend. With a Grammy-winning score by Jake Heggie and a libretto by Gene Scheer, the opera focuses on an enslaved woman, Mary Jane Bowser, and an anti-slavery white woman, Elizabeth Van Lew, who collaborated in spying for the Union in Richmond during the closing stages of the Civil War.

The title is a pun, as Elizabeth (mezzo Ashley Dixon) and Mary Jane (soprano Jaqueline Echols McCarley) explain in a first-act duet. On one hand, intelligence is the information gained through Mary Jane’s spycraft. On the other, intelligence refers to Mary Jane’s sharp intellect and literacy. It was her idea to infiltrate Jefferson Davis’s home, enabling her to gain access to Confederate military information from white folks who can’t fathom what a socially invisible Black servant might hear, see, and remember.

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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).

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With Richmond’s Civil War past as its backdrop, a new opera brings the city’s hidden history of espionage to the forefront through music, storytelling and live performance.

The Library of Virginia and Virginia Opera will present a free panel discussion and live musical performance exploring Civil War-era spy networks that inspired the opera “Intelligence.”

“Decoding ‘Intelligence’: The Real- Life Spy Network Behind the Opera” will be held in the lecture hall at the Library of Virginia on Wednesday, Feb. 4, from 6 to 7:15 p.m. Registration is required at lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/16275895.

Historians Trenton Hizer, the library’s senior manuscripts acquisition and digital archivist; Nathan Hall, a park ranger for the National Park Service; and author Libby Carty McNamee will discuss espionage efforts, acts of resistance and figures such as Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Jane Bowser whose lives helped shape the opera.

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For Virginia Opera he has recently designed Carmen. He also works frequently with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, The Atlanta Opera, New Orleans Opera, Sarasota Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Utah Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Santa Barbara, Indiana University, and many more. For Opera San Jose his 34 designs include the West Coast Premieres of Anna Karenina, Silent Night and the American premiere of Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella.

In NYC his work Off-Broadway has been seen at Second Stage Theater, The Duke on 42nd Street, Fellowship for the Performing Arts, York Theatre Company, Mint Theater Company, 47th Street Theatre, New Worlds Theatre Project, The Shop, The Cherry Lane Theatre, The Playwright’s Realm and Keen Company where his 11 productions include the Off-Broadway revivals of Tick, Tick…Boom!, Ordinary Days, John and Jen, Marry Me a Little and the new, award-winning world premiere of Adam Gwon’s All the World’s a Stage.  Other NYC credits include work at 59e59, HERE Arts, Clubbed Thumb, Studio 42 and 15 productions for New School For Drama.

His international credits include designs for the West End in London and the current tours of Sesame Street Live!, Peppa Pig Sing Along, Blippi: The Wonderful World Tour, as well as Baby Shark Live!, PJ Masks Live! and Nickelodeon Takeover at the Feria de Leon 2025. He has designed regionally at Pasadena Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Antaeus Theatre Company, Bucks County Playhouse, Royal George Theatre, Stages Houston, Hudson Stage Company, Gulfshore Playhouse, Catholic University of America and multiple productions for Norwegian Cruise Line.

Steven also worked extensively as an Associate Designer for Robert Brill and David Gallo on Broadway, national tours, The Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Disney Theatricals, Dreamworks, and a multitude of other regional theatres and companies.  Additional work has included Associate Design credits for Jesse Poleshuck, Walt Spangler, Christopher Acebo, and Assistant Design for Christopher Oram, Alexander Dodge and exhibit and broadcast design with Clickspring Design, Gallagher & Associates and Jack Morton Worldwide.

His design for Candide at Des Moines Metro Opera won Honorable Mention at the 2021 Golden Trezzini Awards for Architecture and Design. Falstaff was selected as a finalist in the World Stage Design 2017 exhibit in Taipei, Taiwan. His work was selected for exhibition in the USA student exhibit in the 2007 Prague Quadrennial and he was the 2008 USITT Rose Brand Scenic Design award winner and was the 2013 Live Design Broadway Master Class speaker for associate set design. For more, follow Steven @stevenckempdesign and www.stevenckemp.com.

Virginia Opera is performing ‘Intelligence,’ which is based on two Richmond women who worked for the North during the Civil War. The opera will be performed in Norfolk, Richmond and Fairfax.