NORFOLK – For Rob Fisher, are the hills alive with the sound of music?

“Absolutely!” said Fisher, a Norfolk native and musical theater figurehead. He returned home last month to lead a new production of “The Sound of Music.”

The classic musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein will be performed May 13-15 at the Harrison Opera House and is co-presented by Virginia Arts Festival and Virginia Opera.

Fisher stayed at an Airbnb not far from his childhood home in Bayview.

“I was just in the garden listening to the birds and comparing the birds here to my Connecticut birds. I’m a little sad to say, but the Connecticut birds win in terms of melody.

“Here, the sound of the wind in the incense pines is a kind of music that I miss. Really, I’m ridiculously attuned to the sounds of nature.

Over the past month, he’s been the most tuned for “The Sound of Music,” which will be marked by his honed signature approach at the New York City Center Encores! series, which he directed from 1994 to 2005. The series consisted of concert stagings of forgotten musicals. Rather than imposing an updated concept, his practice was to run through the score and story structure for the creators’ intent. The series made him famous.

He breathed life into “Chicago: The Musical,” now Broadway’s longest-running revival, and it became his biggest hit.

Fisher has participated in his hometown arts festival since its inception. In January, the festival named him artistic advisor to the Goode family for musical theater and the American Songbook.

He is proud to be associated with the festival, although his regular concerts are with major theater and opera companies and orchestras around the world.

“The lineup is still stellar. The whole town should be proud.

Fisher’s contribution has often been to attract top talent to Hampton Roads. On May 21, he will lead the Virginia Symphony Orchestra in concert with two superstars, sopranos Renée Fleming and Kristin Chenoweth.

“The Sound of Music” is Fisher’s first full-scale musical here. It’s the truest story of a nun in 1938 Austria whose temporary job as governess to seven children turns into a lifelong commitment when she falls in love with their naval officer father. A harmonizing family band results.

The 1959 musical and the 1965 film differ from the real story published by Maria von Trapp in 1949 and by other authors. For example, to escape the Nazis, the family did not walk to Switzerland, but simply crossed train tracks behind their villa and boarded a train for Italy.

When Fisher worked on the show for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2014, he broke attendance records. He noted tons of family groups in the audience.

In 2012, he conducted a concert version for New York’s Carnegie Hall with 55 musicians that “was lavish,” he says.

In Norfolk, 39 musicians from the Virginia Symphony will perform, forming a larger group than that used for the original Broadway tour.

One of the many decisions facing a director of “The Sound of Music” is whether to turn to classically trained singers or musical theater performers. Fisher and Matt Kunkel, the show’s director, chose both.

“Fisher is perhaps the conductor who moves most comfortably between the realms of Broadway and classical,” reported classicalvoiceamerica.orgthe online news journal of the Music Critics Association of North America.

“I’m lucky to have experience in both worlds,” Fisher said, “and know how to talk to them about where they’re from. And they come from different places.

Opera singers tend to read music better and arrive with memorized songs and dialogue.

In contrast, “a lot of people in musical theater haven’t learned to work on their own,” Fisher said. Many prefer to find their characters in rehearsal.

“I don’t find that to be a problem,” he said.

The division between the two camps is blurring.

“Nowadays there are musical theater artists who are great singers and opera singers who are wonderful actors. There’s a big overlap of people who can do anything and that’s how we let’s air the series,” Fisher said.

Audidi soprano Marie Moore swings back and forth. The classically trained Chesapeake native, who sang at the Metropolitan Opera, has a thriving and diverse career. As the head nun, she’ll sing the tough showstopper, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”

Moore is black, and it is possible that a mother abbess in Austria in the late 1930s could have been black. Historian Shannen Dee Williams wrote about religiondispatches.org that she unearthed “a long and rich history of black Catholic nuns” in the Americas, Africa and Europe.

“It was our intention from the beginning,” Fisher said, “to make this convent the place where nuns of all colors, who might not be welcome elsewhere, would be welcome.”

Still, Moore was cast for “what she brings to the role,” Fisher said, “which is that deep understanding and that wisdom when she looks at Maria. And that tremendous warmth and faith.

Mikaela Bennett, who plays Maria, was classically trained at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. In 2019, she played another Maria, from “West Side Story”, at the Lyric Opera Chicago. In July, she will reprise her role as “Sound of Music” at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY.

“He’s a star,” Kunkel said. “Five years from now, we’ll all say I knew her when. She’s got that glorious soprano. She is one of those artists who can do it all and wants to do it all. “As an actress, she’s willing to try anything. The icing on the cake is that she’s so good with kids.

Kunkel said the child actors clung to her.

“Climbing all over her is the most appropriate phrase. They love him so much. She only has sweetness.

Of the seven von Trapp children, all but the oldest are local. Liesl, played by Kiara Lee, studies musical theater at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Four study at the Hurray Players, the Norfolk family theater that has sent many graduates to Broadway.

“They are exceptional children,” Kunkel said. “Even our little Gretl. She just turned 6 two weeks ago. She’s kinda professional. She remembers things better than me. It’s Stormie Treviño, whose father is Alex Treviño, the director of the Old Dominion University marching band. His sister, Rainey Treviño, was also chosen.

The creative team incorporates beloved songs that were added to the film. These include “I Have Confidence”, which a nervous Maria sings on her way to meet the von Trapps, and “Something Good”, sung by Maria and “the Captain” as they fall in love.

The connection between Bennett and baritone Edward Watts, who plays the patriarch, is “electric,” Kunkel said. Watts had starring roles on Broadway.

Both Kunkel and Fisher loved the cast. “I think it’s definitely going to be a cut above,” Fisher said. “The cast is great. Everyone is perfect for the role.

“The first time we meet Mikaela, she opens her mouth and sings: ‘The hills are alive!'”

It’s the sound of a voice, says Fisher, “that the hills would be happy to hear.”

Contact Teresa Annas at teresa.annas123@gmail.com.

What: “The Sound of Music”, co-presented by Virginia Opera and Virginia Arts Festival

Or: Harrison Opera House, 160 W. Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk

When: 8 p.m. May 13; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. May 14; 2 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: From $39

Details: 757-282-2822, vafest.org