In her professional lifetime to date, jazzy vocalist and actress Melissa Errico has played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, Cosette in Les Misérables’ and Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park with George (one of many Sondheim roles she’s undertaken), along with her real-life status as a Tony Award nominee for those Broadway efforts.

But when Errico sets foot and voice on the stage of Alexandria, Virginia’s Schlesinger Center on May 7, in a concert event titled The Story of a Rose, she’ll tackle early jazz and ragtime favorites in the service of a story of Italian immigrant seamstress women who came to America by boat during World War I and sacrificed all, making uniforms for the U.S. war effort.

Written by Errico with the musical direction of jazz pianist Tedd Firth and his ensemble, the May 7 program finds the vocalist-author sing-speaking the scrawl of love letters and memories of sons and lovers taken from scraps of paper, all while sharing wartime songs of patriotism and protest. The core group, which Errico has taken to calling the Peerless Quartet, is Firth with trumpeter Bruce Harris, bassist David Finck and drummer Mark McLean.

Now is a pretty great time for protest, when you consider that The Story of a Rose was originally scheduled for the Kennedy Center, until the Trump administration — actually, Trump personally — took over curation of the beloved, now besieged Washington, DC hall. Its producers moved the show to its new venue, a 15-minute drive away, with the support of the Doughboy Foundation and the Gary Sinise Foundation.

“I’m glad at how it turned out,” says Errico. “I wanted to do a show that everyone could attend — left, right and center…. This show belongs to everybody. And the good thing was that Gary Sinise gave us a large donation as we wanted to move to a larger space when we outgrew it. Gary gave us a lot of money and wants to get a lot of veterans to this show.”

Errico also rhapsodizes about having just received her Italian citizenship (“are you psyched for me…. I’m saying goodbye”) and revels in the joy of having just witnessed designer Eric Winterling’s period costumes for The Story of a Rose (“I’ve been doing this since I was 18, and these outfits are the most amazing I’ve ever worn”).