Displaying items by tag: Jake Heggie

Chicago Opera Theater (COT), Chicago’s foremost producer of new and reimagined opera, closes its 50^th Anniversary season presenting the final performances of the world premiere tour of Before It All Goes Dark, the latest opera by the most famous American opera writing duo working today: composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. Produced in partnership with Music of Remembrance, Before it All Goes Dark follows the fascinating and true story of a suburban Chicago man who, just before his death, discovers he is the heir of a Jewish art collector killed in the Holocaust, and the rightful owner of a cache of valuable art looted by the Nazi’s. The remarkable story was reported by Chicago’s own Howard Reich- Emmy-award winning author, journalist, filmmaker, and former classical music critic at the Chicago Tribune. Before All Goes Dark stars renowned bass-baritone Ryan McKinny and mezzo-soprano Megan Marino in two performances only; Saturday, May 25 at 7:30 PM and Sunday, May 26 at 3:00 PM at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S Michigan Ave. Tickets start at $45.00 and are available at chicagooperatheater.org.

While researching an article on violins looted during WWII, Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Reich got in touch with an organization dedicated to repatriating stolen cultural property. The organization was attempting to track down an heir of Emil Freund – a Jewish art collector killed in the Holocaust whose stolen art was being claimed as property of the Czech government. With no more information than the names of Freund’s sisters and a hunch that they immigrated to Chicago, Reich traced the Freund family tree to Gerald “Mac” MacDonald; an ailing Vietnam veteran living in Lyons, IL. After discovering he was the rightful heir to Freund’s multi-million-dollar collection, MacDonald made an arduous journey to Prague- made all the harder as he dealt with debilitating health issues– to see the art and convince the Czech government to turn it over to him. During the journey, he discovered not only the astonishing works of art in the collection, but also a deep connection to his long-lost relative and his own Jewishness which had been suppressed by his family for generations. Freund’s collection was never turned over to MacDonald who died three years later at the age of 55.

“When I first identified Mac as the heir to this invaluable art collection, I had no idea how this news would change his life,” said longtime Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich. “If Mac were alive today, I believe he’d be stunned and pleased to discover that the world still wants to hear from a long-forgotten Vietnam vet. Thanks to Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, and Music of Remembrance, Mac’s story of tragic loss and surprising redemption will live forever on the operatic stage.”

Each performance of Before It All Goes Dark will begin in Freund’s vibrant salon, where audiences will be surrounded by projections of the looted art and the sounds of Czech music – all written by composers who would ultimately perish in concentration camps. The action then moves to Mac’s sparse, dark apartment in Chicagoland 63 years later, drawing a sharp distinction between Mac’s reality and the astonishing world of color, identity, and connection embodied by Freund’s collection.

“We are thrilled to once again be partnering with Music of Remembrance and to be bringing this story that is at once local as well as universal to our Chicago audiences,” added COT Edlis Neeson General Director Lawrence Edelson. “Howard’s dedicated research and insightful reporting, interpreted through the artistic lens of Jake and Gene is sure to be an incredibly moving, not-to-be-missed experience as performed by Ryan, Megan, and the musicians of Music of Remembrance.”

Before It All Goes Dark, the newest opera by celebrated opera writing team Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, was commissioned by Music of Remembrance. The world premiere tour makes stops in Seattle on May 19 and San Francisco on May 22 before coming to Chicago’s Studebaker Theater on May 25 & 26. Erich Parce directs and Joseph Mechavich conducts the Music of Remembrance Ensemble: Demarre McGill, flute; Laura DeLuca, clarinet; Mikhail Shmidt, violin; Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola; Eric Han, cello; Jonathan Green, double bass; and Jessica Choe, piano.

About Music of Remembrance:

Established in 1998, Music of Remembrance (MOR) has made a unique impact through works that honor the resilience of all people excluded or persecuted for faith, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. Its programs pay tribute to historic memory, and directly confront challenges to human rights and dignity today. In addition to its work discovering and performing music from the Holocaust, MOR is admired around the world for its leadership in commissioning and premiering new works by leading composers, including varied chamber ensembles, song cycles, choral works, dance music, film scores, musical dramas, and full-length operas. MOR’s online concerts, nine albums, three documentary films, and many outreach programs have added to the impact experienced by live audiences. MOR’s annual David Tonkonogui Memorial Award welcomes new generations along on this journey, nurturing young musicians who seek to address issues of human rights through their art.

About Jake Heggie:

American composer Jake Heggie is best known for Dead Man Walking, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, with a libretto by Terrence McNally, and his critically acclaimed operas Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, and It’s a Wonderful Life, all with libretti by Gene Scheer. In addition to 10 full-length operas and numerous one-acts, Heggie has composed more than 300 art songs, as well as concerti, chamber music, choral, and orchestral works, which have been performed on five continents. A bold new production of Dead Man Walking opens the Metropolitan Opera’s 23/24 season, while Intelligence, created with Jawole Zollar and Gene Scheer, receives its world premiere on opening night of Houston Grand Opera’s season. The Elements: Fire, Heggie’s new commission for violinist Joshua Bell, premieres at Germany’s Elbphilharmonie and tours to major stages in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Hong Kong.

About Gene Scheer:

Gene Scheer’s collaboration with Jake Heggie is a truly remarkable creative partnership. Scheer has crafted powerful works with other opera composers as well: Tobias Picker (An American Tragedy and Thérèse Raquin), Joby Talbot (Everest), and Jennifer Higdon (Cold Mountain). A composer in his own right, Scheer has written songs for Renée Fleming, Sylvia McNair, Stephanie Blythe, Jennifer Larmore, Denyce Graves, and Nathan Gunn. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns featured Scheer’s song “American Anthem” in his Emmy-winning documentary “The War,” and millions of people around the world heard President Biden share inspiring lines from that song in his inauguration address.

About Howard Reich:

Howard Reich was born in Chicago and at age 10 moved with his family to Skokie, a northern suburb that was a nexus of Holocaust survivors like his parents. At age 16, Howard happened on the film “An American in Paris” and instantly became obsessed with music. By 18 he was a piano performance major at Northwestern, and at 22 he began freelancing articles on music for the Chicago Daily News. The next year he started contributing arts coverage to the Chicago Tribune, where he was hired full time in 1983 and spent his entire newspaper career. Howard’s stories took him to London, Paris, Warsaw, Vienna, Moscow, Munich, Prague, Havana, Panama and other locales, as well as deep into one of the most culturally vibrant cities in the world: Chicago. After 30 years as the Tribune’s jazz critic, Howard also became the newspaper’s classical and opera critic, serving in this joint capacity until he retired from the newspaper in 2021. Additionally recognized as the Emmy-winning writer/producer of three documentary films and author of six books, including “Prisoner of Her Past: A Son’s Memoir” and “The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel,” Howard lives in a suburb of Chicago with Pam Becker, his wife, a retired Tribune editor.

About Chicago Opera Theater:

Celebrating its 50^th Anniversary season in 2023/24, Chicago Opera Theater is a company laser-focused on living its values: expanding the tradition of opera as a living art form, producing high-quality works new to Chicago audiences, identifying top-tier casts and creative talent at the beginning of grand operatic careers, and following through on commitments to equity and access – behind the scenes, on the stage, and in the audience. Since its founding in 1973, COT has grown from a grassroots community-based company to a national leader in an increasingly vibrant, diverse, and forward-looking art form. COT has staged over 155 operas, including 81 Chicago premieres and 47 operas by American composers. COT is led Lawrence Edelson who began his tenure as General Director in the 2023/24 season; and Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya who concludes her tenure with the company at the end of this season.

The Vanguard Initiative, founded in 2018 and celebrating its fifth anniversary this Spring, is COT's fully comprehensive program for composers ready to delve into the world of opera. This immersive two-year residency includes participation in all COT productions, sessions with top industry leaders, extensive study of repertoire and vocal writing, and direct insight into administrative and other behind-the-scenes processes, culminating with the development of a full-length opera commissioned by the company. The program is guided and overseen by Elizabeth Morse and Genius Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya, with Composer Advisors Jake Heggie, Kamala Sankaram, and Gene Scheer. The program has renewed funding from the Mellon Foundation for the 2023/24 season. The 2023/24 Vanguard Composers are Gillian Rae Perry (second year) and Carlos R. Carrillo (first year).

The remainder of Chicago Opera Theater’s season includes COT's 50th Anniversary Gala, Fifty & Fabulous: A Golden Night of Song & Celebration on April 5, and the Vanguard Initiative concert premiere of The Weight of Light April 27.

For more information on Chicago Opera Theater productions, visit chicagooperatheater.org/

What separates a musical from an opera? Technically an opera is a story in which all the dialogue is exchanged through song. Hence the term rock opera, which describes modern musicals that have little to no spoken dialogue. Such semantics may seem trivial, but as the world moves forward traditional opera must too in order to thrive.

“Dead Man Walking” is by no means a new work, as it had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in 1999. It’s composed by Jake Heggie with a book by Tony Award winning playwright Terrence McNally. It is an adaptation of the 1995 film for which Susan Sarandon won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Based on the true story of Sister Helen Prejean’s special relationship with two death row inmates in Louisiana, “Dead Man Walking” is an excellent example of what the future of opera theatre might look like.

“Dead Man Walking” holds its Chicago premiere at the Lyric under the direction of Leonard Foglia. What is immediately striking is a scene of graphic sexual violence right off the bat. A stark departure from the usual 19th Century fantasies normally produced on the Lyric stage. Though the English subtitles are much appreciated, they’re somewhat unnecessary as this opera is sung in English.

Heggie’s music shares a lot in common with traditional musical theatre. The consistent through-line melody “He Will Gather Us Around” will have you humming into intermission and wiping your eyes by the finale. While Heggie’s compositions are quite good, and very cinematic in their aesthetic, it is the deeply humane storyline of condemned prisoner Joseph De Rocher that will hold your attention. McNally does what he does best, sharp dialogue and tight narrative structure.

It’s not often to hear sniffles during the climax of a traditional opera. No matter how arresting the score, or brilliant the performances, classical opera can sometimes create an emotional disconnect. In this work, we see modern day reality and that feels more relatable than say, Wagner. That’s not to say it’s missing the spectacle. As the case with any Lyric production, the staging is epic and visually stunning.

Though most of the cast is making their Lyric debut, they leave a big impression. Joe De Rocher is sung by Ryan McKinny. A booming voice fitting of an unrepentant killer and he’s able to sing opera in a southern accent. Patricia Racette portrays Sister Helen Prejean. It’s her journey we are on. She knows as well as the audience that De Rocher is guilty, but like her, we hold the slimmest hope that maybe he’s innocent. Her unwavering love for De Rocher is his redemption. It’s her power as an actress and a singer to evoke the spirit of forgiveness. Even as McNally’s dialogue is stretched into soaring arias, there’s an authenticity in Racette’s performance.

“Dead Man Walking” achieves what good opera should, and that is to move its audience through the power of music. Theatre, regardless of the type should comment on the world in which we live. While the classics are so for a reason, they’re becoming less of a draw for younger audiences. “Dead Man Walking” proves that opera isn’t a dying art form. It’s an invitation for audiences to have post-show discussions about real world issues.

Through November 22nd at Lyric Opera Chicago. 20 N Wacker Drive. 312-827-5600

Chicago Opera Theater presented the new opera, Moby Dick, by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, in a brave, intelligent, and strikingly beautiful performance last Thursday at the Harris Theater in Chicago. Usually, the old adage that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” seems well suited to most COT productions, but what can one say about a production in which all of the parts were truly excellent, yet the work itself did not quite live up to its disparate elements? Moby Dick is a well-crafted, entertaining and enjoyable opera, performed with a wealth of talent in an impeccable production, yet it never delivered the impact which could be expected from such an epic work of literature. Perhaps it is like Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in that respect, a work which is so epic, and which has a central character which is so complex that it defies transliteration. Even Verdi wouldn’t touch it. There are a few epic operas which have complex characters, Verdi’s Don Carlo and Samuel Barber’s Anthony and Cleopatra come immediately to mind, but there are many epic operas whose characters are not that complex, and there are many complex characters in operas which are not particularly epic in scope. It is really, really hard to do both.

Jake Heggie is an immensely popular, talented and accomplished composer. His canon of nearly 300 art songs has become a staple of the vocal repertoire, and his operas, such as Dead Man Walking, have achieved worldwide acclaim. However, with Moby Dick, while Heggie has mastered the musical language of opera, it seems as though he has not quite found his full operatic voice. Every scene is beautifully written, well suited to the human voice, gorgeously orchestrated and theatrically complete, much like an art song. However, they are more like individually luminescent pearls, rather than one magnificently encircling necklace. Heggie’s music is through-composed, yet the scenes feel as though the next one is of a different style, almost as though it was from a separate work, than the scene before. There is a jumble of styles which are reminiscent of Vaughan Willams, Britten, Stravinsky, Rutter and even the film score of “Lawrence of Arabia”, among a number of others. The result is that moments of tension are lost in transition between scenes, and the work as a whole never achieves the overall dramatic arch leading to the penultimate scene’s destruction of Ahab and his ship. This may be because it is never made clear what the opera is really about, or how any of the several relationships which are explored effect the others in driving the dramatic action to its tragic end. Is it about Starbuck’s struggle with morality and opposition to Godless authority? Is it about the friendship between Ishmael (here called Greenhorn) and Queequeg which bridges racial and religious chasms? Or is it really about Ahab’s self-absorbed and tragically maniacal obsession with exacting his revenge upon the great white whale? Whatever it is about, the audience should have walked out feeling as though they had just been kicked in the gut, not as if they had just seen a Broadway musical. It all seemed rather sanitized and prepackaged to please, rather than move or challenge the audience.

The tragic character in Moby Dick is without question Captain Ahab, with his unreasoning and implacable hatred of the “fish” which took his leg. Ahab’s manic-depressively single-minded focus upon finding the whale is the force which provides the dramatic tension in both the novel and the opera. Although he gave a splendidly well sung performance, Tenor Richard Cox seemed much too well adjusted and reasonable, portraying only a hint at the driving compulsion which takes Ahab and all the men of the Pequod to their watery graves. His aria, “I leave a white and turbid wake” eloquently explained his morbid fascination, but did not express its inherent dread.

Providing the foil to Ahab’s insane fixation, Aleksey Bogdanov as Starbuck was spectacular. Possessed of a booming, velvety smooth bass-baritone voice which easily soared through heavy orchestration, Bogdanov’s performance was powerful, committed, and nuanced. Bogdanov has the kind of voice usually associated with villains, such as Scarpia or Iago, yet his Starbuck was approachable and sympathetically touching.

As Greenhorn (Ishmael), the sweet-voiced tenor Andrew Bidlack was ideal. His thoughtful portrayal progressed from the naïve and unexperienced youth in search of knowledge of the world to the emotionally savaged sole survivor of the voyage with honest sincerity. Wallace’s Greenhorn was the mate every sailor wishes to have as his fellow oarsman.

Bass baritone Vince Wallace as Queequeg was exuberantly vigorous and entertaining, while never allowing the character to become a parody or stereotype. His straightforward humanity provided the structure for Queequeg and Greenhorn to bridge their cultural and religious divide and forge a deep friendship. However, Queequeg’s mysticism which foresees his death and the tragic confrontation with Moby Dick, is rather strangely portrayed as a heart attack, not as the ennui resulting in a spiritually broken heart. Perhaps the composer or director didn’t feel that having Queequeg simply waste away from a broken heart would be obvious enough to hold the audience’s interest.

A curtain speech announced that role of Stubb would be sung by cover Nick Ward. This is usually an ominous sign that the audience should be prepared for a somewhat under-rehearsed and tenuous performance. Not so, in the case of Mr. Ward. He sang impressively, and danced and cavorted around the stage with assurance and gusto, providing a great deal of comic relief with his sidekick Aaron Short as Flask. The physicality of the two was amusing and impressive.

The music for Pip requires the powerful adult voice of a pants role, and as the cabin boy, Summer Hassan sang with a luminous voice, soaring above the combined forces of the all-male chorus and orchestra. Equally impressive were the other male soloists and chorus. Each one was an outstanding singer and actor. They were supported by four male dancers who provided vigorous physicality to many scenes. Chicago Opera Theater does not have a full time professional chorus like the Lyric Opera of Chicago, so to be able to bring together an ensemble of such high quality speaks volumes concerning the commitment of the company to the highest performance standards. Kudos go to Chicago Opera Theater for its casting choices.

Those high standards are also demonstrated by the striking, and extremely functional set by Erhard Rom (whose remarkable whale’s eye at the end was a stroke of genius), the effective, yet atmospheric lighting by David Martin Jaques, and the clean and imaginative stage direction by Kristine McIntyre. McIntyre is a director who truly understands the unique needs of opera and opera singers, never pandering to the audience with unnecessary stage business or requiring the actors to go beyond the limits of good singing. Everything that happened on stage was both interesting and important. However a curious statement in the director’s note in the program may explain the seeming ambivalence of the opera. Ms. McIntyre states, “At its core, Moby Dick is a story about friendship.” While it is certainly true that the friendship is an important part of the story, and we want to find some form of redemption and growth of the human spirit in the story, it is not the driving force which impels the drama or precipitates the tragic end.

Moby Dick was masterfully conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya. Under her baton the 60 piece orchestra played beautifully with a sumptuous sound. The one quibble is that with such dense orchestration at the beginning of the piece, the really loud playing might have been restrained so that the climax could have been more effective. By the end, the loud bits had become a bit tiresome. However, that is by no means entirely the conductor’s fault. The positive influence of Ms. Yankovskaya’s direction continues to impress in a business which is highly competitive for better orchestra players. Again the commitment to excellence from COT is to be commended.