JAKE HEGGIE

OPERA America has announced the recipients of its 2024 Repertoire Development Grants. ...

It’s rather surprising, really, for the audience to embrace a contemporary piece like DEAD MAN WALKING, no matter how easily it falls upon the ears, considering the subject matter. In this Ivo van Hove production, it starts with a rape and double murder in a rather graphic piece of film, the use of video being one of van Hove’s trademarks. It ends with a death by lethal injection, also graphically shown in live video....

xThe reviews are in for the premiere production of the new Met season, Dead Man Walking. American composer Jake Heggie’s masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, has its highly anticipated Met premiere, in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove....

The Metropolitan Opera somehow managed to upstage itself on Thursday, when it offered audiences a spectacular recital by Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, with her excellent musical partner James Baillieu, on piano, 12 days before the company’s official opening night (the Jake Heggie-Terrence McNally DEAD MAN WALKING on the 26th). It’ll be a hard act to follow....

While there’s always a great deal of talk about where the next generation of operagoers is coming from, there’s much less hand-wringing about the sources of the new generation of singers. After hearing the Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition’s Grand Finals Concert at the Met on Sunday afternoon, we could plainly hear that the future of the Met roster is alive and well and waiting to take center stage....

According to the New York Times, the Metropolitan Opera is set to reduce performances by 10% and withdraw $30 million from an endowment to help the company focus more on new work, which have been selling better than the classics. The company has been struggling with ticket sales post-pandemic....

I’ve heard much praise about the quality of the vocal writing of Jake Heggie from singers who adore the way his music caresses their voices. But THREE DECEMBERS, performed this past weekend at the Berkshire Opera Festival at Pavilion Theatre, PS21 in Chatham, New York, was the first time I heard a complete dramatic work by the composer. As characters from FOLLIES by Sondheim--a composer whose music echoes in Heggie’s score--said about showing up at the reunion that frames that musical, “I’m so g...

After a season-long series of competitions at the district, regional, and national levels, a panel of expert judges named six singers as the winners of the 2022 Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. ...

OPERA America has announced the recipients of the 2022 Repertoire Development Grants: American Lyric Theater (New York, NY); Beth Morrison Projects (New York, NY); Houston Grand Opera (Houston, TX); Lyric Opera of Chicago (Chicago, IL); MassOpera (Salem, MA); Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (St. Louis, MO); Pensacola Opera (Pensacola, FL) and OperaDelaware (Wilmington, DE); and Virginia Opera (Norfolk, VA). A total of $225,000 was awarded to eight projects (see below) by these nine companies....