Mission

Victory Hall Opera is a chamber opera troupe now entering its 6th Season. Our Mission is to advance the performing craft, power, and reach of opera with a pioneering model that places the creative reins in the hands of the one who knows opera best: the Singer.

Rooted in Charlottesville, VA, we actively engage those who have not yet found opera appealing or even encountered the art form, offering an experience of the human instrument that draws them into closer contact with life.

What We Do

Praised for "breaking new ground and pushing the envelope", and called "the future of the field" by The Washington Post, Victory Hall Opera is now entering its 6th Season of bringing cutting-edge, thrilling opera to Charlottesville, Virginia. VHO presents a new model for what an opera company can be: not an institution, but a troupe: of exceptional, high-caliber singers, advancing the art form together.

In our first 5 years, we will have presented 22 different shows, including 4 new commissions, and several Virginia and U.S. Premieres. Each performance is collaboratively developed by the artists in our troupe, and must meet our three-fold artistic test: it must be "disarming, exquisite, sincere".

VHO draws from the rehearsal and performance practices of contemporary physical/ devised theater (such as Moises Kaufman's "Moment Work"), seeking to reinvigorate opera by evolving the stagecraft itself. This means challenging ourselves to create productions that look and feel like no other - that are personal, relevant, and vivid, and invite and engage new audiences. Add some of the best singing in the world, experienced up-close in intimate venues, and you have a recipe for an extraordinary experience.

And our name? "Victory Halls" were built all over the world after WWI as community theaters, and to encourage touring musicians to perform concerts in regional towns. Victory Hall Opera harkens back to this spirit and seeks to bring the best the opera world has to offer back home to Charlottesville, VA.