Soprano-Aerialist Elizabeth Wohl to Perform Acrobatic Opera in Putney 

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• Courtesy Of Next Stage Arts
• Elizabeth Wohl

Arias will soar when Elizabeth Wohl appears at Next Stage Arts in Putney on Saturday, March 16.

The classically trained Brattleboro soprano will present works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet and longtime Vermonter Gwyneth Walker while performing aerial acrobatics with silks and rope.

As the giddy, lovestruck Juliet from Gounod's Roméo et Juliet, Wohl will climb two suspended swaths of flowing fabric, then twirl and spin her way through "Je Veux Vivre." She'll sing sideways, upside down and right side up — doing the splits — all while airborne.

"Habanera," from Bizet's Carmen, on the other hand, calls for rope rather than silks. "Carmen is a strong and serious character, and so there's just something about the physicality of the rope," Wohl said. "It's a heavier apparatus."

"Unique" is a word that commonly pops up when people describe Wohl's artistic fusion. Most arias are challenging enough when sung on a stage. Elsie Smith, cofounder and director of programming at Brattleboro's New England Center for Circus Arts, calls Wohl's opera in the air "an incredible display of vocal control, physicality and aerial grace."

Wohl, 47, knew of no one staging aerial arias when she began developing them, around 2015. (She has since learned of a handful, including Texas soprano Rainelle Krause, who sings a Queen of the Night aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute while performing on aerial silks.)

Despite a lack of mentors, Wohl took a rather logical, though extended, path to this performance art. A singer for as long as she can remember, a dancer since age 7, and a musical theater performer throughout middle and high school, she enrolled at Connecticut College in 1995, hoping its strong music, theater and dance departments would catapult her to Broadway. But the departments didn't collaborate, she said, so "I studied opera and fell in love with opera."

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• Courtesy Of Next Stage Arts
• Elizabeth Wohl

She earned a law degree from Vermont Law School — she continues to practice as general counsel for the Brattleboro Retreat — and moved to Brattleboro in 2004. The New England Center for Circus Arts opened there three years later. Any time Wohl saw an aerial act, she'd say, "Oh, that looks really fun." At the urging of her wife, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), she finally took an intro class "and fell in love with it," Wohl said.

That was in 2013. Soon after, she said, it was clear that her two loves belonged together: "It just sort of hit me like a bolt of lightning: This has to happen." Some arias, she was convinced, "will be even better interpreted in the air than on the ground."

"Je Veux Vivre" was the first she choreographed. Juliet sings it after meeting Romeo at a ball. "She's just, like, in that bubbly, giddy, first-love state," Wohl said. "There's just real opportunity for movement ... I could use the silks to really further express some of her emotion."

She presented her debut solo show at the circus arts center in 2016. Since then, she has reworked that first aria as her skills and strength have advanced, and she's added eight other works to her repertoire.

Combining arias with acrobatics is physically taxing. The first run-through of a new piece can feel impossible, she said, "and then by the second or third time through, you figure out, Oh, I have to breathe here, or I have to pause and move this way in this section."

To train, she sings while she runs — "I always feel a little bad for my neighbors," she said — and does scales in the car after dropping off her kids at school. She aims to be in the air, practicing on vertical apparatus, at least two days a week, for two hours at a time.

Since 2016, Wohl has performed at the Providence, R.I., fringe festival and at concerts, nonprofit fundraisers and weddings. For her upcoming show at Next Stage Arts, pianist Ivan Tan, a lecturer in music at Brown University, will accompany her. Brattleboro tenor James Anderson and Pawlet soprano Sarah Newcomb will also sing — on the ground.