'Blue Viola'

Charles T. Downey, UrbanArias’s ‘Blue Viola’ makes for a somewhat intriguing night at the opera
Washington Post, March 23

Opera companies need to sponsor new works if the genre is to have a future. UrbanArias, a small but feisty company based at the embattled Artisphere in Rosslyn, has helped fill that niche by mounting a few new or recent operas each season since 2010. Its latest offering, “Blue Viola,” by music theater composer Peter Hilliard, makes for a moderately interesting evening at the theater. Less certain is whether audience members looking for opera, and all that word entails, would find what they seek in it.

The clever libretto by Matt Boresi adapts the true story of an 18th-century viola left on a sidewalk by the principal violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra... [Continue reading]

Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi, Blue Viola
UrbanArias
Artisphere (Rosslyn, Va.)

SEE ALSO:
Charles T. Downey, UrbanArias performs ‘Before Breakfast,’ ‘The Filthy Habit’ (Washington Post, April 16, 2012)

Vernon Miles, Death Knell for Arlington's Artisphere? (Arlington Connection, March 12, 2015)

Matt O'Connor, Guilty Plea In Tangled Case Of Hit Man, Stolen Viola (Chicago Tribune, September 1, 1999)

Phat X. Chiem, Prized Viola Recovered, But Mystery Lingers (Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1998)