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Heggie’s 23/24 Season is Packed with Premieres

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Dead Man Walking Opens Metropolitan Opera Season

Simulcast Worldwide to Cinemas Live in HD

September 26 – October 21, 2023

World Premiere Intelligence Opens Houston Grand Opera Season

October 20 – November 3, 2023

World Premiere & Global Tour of Joshua Bell Commission The Elements

Hamburg, Hong Kong, New York in September 2023
Chicago, Seattle in June 2024

World Premiere & U.S. Tour of Before It All Goes Dark

Music of Remembrance in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago in May 2024

DEAD MAN WALKING

Recognized by the Wall Street Journal as “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer,” Jake Heggie is set to deliver a 2023/24 season filled with high-profile premieres and top-tier artistic collaborations. From a pair of opening night galas at the Metropolitan Opera and Houston Grand Opera to orchestral premieres with superstar violinist Joshua Bell in Hamburg, Hong Kong, and New York, Heggie’s works will offer audiences a wide range of perspectives and possibilities.

INTELLIGENCE

Created with director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and librettist Gene Scheer, Intelligence is based on the little-known true story of two women who infiltrated the Confederate White House during the American Civil War. The work receives its world premiere on opening night of Houston Grand Opera’s 23/24 season, conducted by Kwamé Ryan and starring Jamie Barton, Janai Brugger, and J’Nai Bridges. Brooklyn-based dance troupe Urban Bush Women infuses African ancestral dance, an art form rarely experienced in grand opera, in five performances through November 3, 2023.

THE ELEMENTS

Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell commissioned five renowned American composers – Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery,and Kevin Puts – to dedicate themselves to the five Elements that form the basis of Aristotle’s Greek philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine: Fire, Air, Water, Ether, and Earth, respectively. Each composer has contributed one movement to this suite, which will tour major orchestras around the globe. The Elements receives its world premiere with Alan Gilbert conducting the opening night of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra season in Hamburg on September 1-2, 2023; the Asian premiere takes place September 8-9, 2023, with opening night of the Hong Kong Philharmonic season conducted by Jaap van Zweden; and the U.S. premiere will be given by the New York Philharmonic, also led by van Zweden. Subsequent performances include the Midwest premiere with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Juraj Valčuha, June 13-15, 2024, and the West Coast premiere with Seattle Symphony, led by Marin Alsop on June 20 and 22, 2024.

BEFORE IT ALL GOES DARK

Based on a compelling true story first reported by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune, this one-act opera follows Mac, a disabled Vietnam veteran who learns that he is the heir to a priceless art collection, stolen by the Nazis from an ancestor he didn’t know he had. Before It All Goes Dark is Music of Remembrance’s fifth commission of Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. The duo’s artistic partnership with MOR began in 2007 with For a Look or a Touch, believed to be the first major musical work to explore the Third Reich’s persecution of gay people. Before It All Goes Dark receives its world premiere at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall on May 19, 2024, starring bass-baritone Ryan McKinny and mezzo Megan Marino, with members of the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Joseph Mechavich. The Erich Parce production travels to San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre on May 22, 2024, and concludes with two performances at Chicago’s Studebaker Theater, presented in collaboration with Chicago Opera Theater May 25-26, 2024.

“I’m overjoyed – and a bit overwhelmed – by the extraordinary convergence of so many special projects this season,” said composer Jake Heggie. “These works feature some of my favorite colleagues, as well as remarkable new collaborators. I’m especially moved that my first opera, Dead Man Walking, will open the Metropolitan Opera season, while my most recent opera, Intelligence, will open the Houston Grand Opera season. It’s genuinely beyond what I could’ve imagined, and I’m so grateful to be able to share these important stories with audiences around the world.”

“My Life Online” debuts at Edinburgh Fringe

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Scott Eyerly’s tour-de-force one-woman show was featured at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. A unique comedic musical/opera starring Sarah Minns, directed by Oliver Platt, with Lana Bode piano, My Life Online tells the story of Kay, who hasn’t left her apartment for a year. She sees her shrink on Skype, does the cardio carioca workout virtually, and orders everything online. Yet she was once a dynamic immigration lawyer. What happened? Is it agoraphobia? Or something else? This all-sung, one-woman comedy reveals why Kay’s shut herself in… and what it’ll take to get her out.

The reviews are stellar:

The Scotsman “Smart, witty one-woman contemporary opera!”

The Telegraph on Sarah Minns: “It’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better!”

EdinburghFringeGuide

The Edinburgh Reporter

Rating: 3 out of 5.

The Scarlet Ibis

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The Scarlet Ibis is an opera that fuses singers, puppetry and multimedia stagecraft to tell the story of Doodle, a remarkable, disabled boy whose older brother pushes him to be “normal.” Set in rural North Carolina a century ago, the story contrasts notions of physical wholeness versus mystical otherness. Episodic and expressionistic, the narrative draws on elements of Southern Gothic, boy’s adventure and domestic tragedy. It unfolds in thirteen scenes, from Doodle’s traumatic birth to his tragic end. Ingenious set and puppet effects take us to various locations: a house, barn, field and swamp.

The cast includes mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, countertenor Eric S. Brenner, mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer, baritone Keith Phares and contralto Nicole Mitchell. The Scarlet Ibis is for adults and teens.

Music by Stefan Weisman, libretto by David Cote
premiered at the 2015 PROTOTYPE Festival
A co-production between Beth Morrison Projects & HERE
Produced in association with American Opera Projects

The piano/vocal score is available for purchase here.

To request a quote for performance of the work, please click here.

Dead Man Walking at The Met

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The Metropolitan opera has announced their 2023-4 season, which will feature Jake Heggie’s and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking. Since its premiere in 2000, the opera has had over 70 productions throughout the world, and we are thrilled that the Met will be producing it.

With a cast that includes Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen, Ivo van Hove directing and Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting, this production will be a must see next season!

Grammy Nominations

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Congratulations to Jake Heggie, Laura Kaminsky, Robert Paterson and Kevin Puts for their Grammy Nominations. The recording of Heggie’s Great Scott (libretto Terrence McNally) was nominated for two awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Producer of the Year (Blanton Alspaugh). Paterson’s Three Way (libretto David Cote) was also nominated for Producer of the Year (Blanton Alspaugh). And the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society’s Love Comes in at the Eye, (several Puts works) was nominated for Producer of the Year (Judith Sherman). Laura Kaminsky’s Undercurrents was also nominated for Producer of the Year (Judith Sherman).

You can see the full list of nominations here.

AS ONE most-produced opera in North America by a living composer

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Opera America has posted a list of the top 25 operas performed in North America. Number 14 on the list is As One, (Kaminsky, Campbell, Reed) making it the top opera performed in 2016/17 by living writers. Dead Man Walking (Heggie, McNally) comes in as number 23.

Congratulations to Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, Kimberly Reed, Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally! You can see the full list here.

 

Santa Fe Opera Commissions Reed & Kaminsky

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Opera for All Voices
Stories of our Time
a new initiative bringing stories with purpose to all audiences

Commissioned by a consortium of companies led by
Santa Fe Opera in association with San Francisco Opera:

• lyric opera of kansas city • minnesota opera • opera theatre of saint louis •san francisco opera • santa fe opera • sarasota opera • seattle opera

Santa Fe, NM – Santa Fe Opera announces the launch of Opera for All Voices: Stories of our Time, a new initiative committed to telling wide-ranging stories that resonate with all audiences, regardless of age or previous exposure to opera. The seven companies currently in the consortium will work together to commission new works that are flexible in scope and scale, with the potential to be performed in smaller venues and off the main stage while striving for rich storytelling and artistic integrity. The first new work will receive its premiere in 2019 at Santa Fe Opera, composed by Augusta Read Thomas with a libretto by Jason Kim. The second commission will be composed by Laura Kaminsky with a libretto by Kimberly Reed and is slated to premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2020.

Opera for All Voices was born out of the need for works with outstanding artistic quality that can still reach broad-ranging audiences by both accessibility of subject material and budgets. The project also addresses the serious need to bring new audiences to opera by commissioning important works that speak to all voices, designed with modern attention spans in mind, and the need to break down pre-conceived notions that opera is antiquated or elitist.

The teams behind the first two commissions were selected through a rigorous process with feedback from the participating companies. Both teams embody the spirit of the initiative in their previous works, telling stories with purpose through music.

Some Light Emerges premieres at Houston Grand Opera

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The team that created the stunning new opera As One has reunited to create Some Light Emerges for Houston Grand Opera’s HGOCo. Premiering in March 2017, the opera celebrates the unique and enduring impact of Houston’s Rothko Chapel, which was created by painter Mark Rothko. A stunning octagonal structure that serves as a non-denominational chapel, the structure is filled with 14 paintings by Rothko, and was completed in 1971.

Houston Grand Opera shines “Light” on Rothko Chapel

A review from the Houston Chronicle, following the premiere of the new Kaminsky-Campbell-Reed opera, writes:

“Some Light Emerges, the new opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera through its community collaborative initiative, dives right into Rothko and de Menil’s shared spiritual vision with plaintive, purposefully meandering music by Laura Kaminsky and an audacious libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. The 75-minute chamber piece–written for seven singers and seven instruments–just might be the best articulation of the Rothko Chapel’s purpose in modern times … it’s nothing short of a pronunciation of American ideals. The piece remained sublime, a testament to both the performers and the writing.”

View excerpts from the premiere production.

Heggie/Scheer It’s a Wonderful Life

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bedford-falls2

Bedford Falls came to the opera stage last December in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s new opera It’s a Wonderful Life, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. Partially based on the classic Capra film, Heggie and Scheer bring their own unique perspective to the story, enriched by Heggie’s lyrical music.

Starring William Burden as George Bailey, Talise Trevigne as Clara, and Andrea Caroll as Mary, the cast is rounded out with operatic stalwarts Anthony Dean Griffey as Uncle Billy and Rod Gilfrey as Mr. Potter and Mr. Gowers. Patrick Summers conducted, and Leonard Foglia directed the production.

Co-commissioned by Indiana University and San Francisco Opera. (Nov.-Dec. 2018)

For additional information, please click here.