Jake Heggie News

Lyric Opera of Kansas City continues its 59th season with the Lyric Opera debut co-production of Mozart's masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro November 5, 9, 11 and 13 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Donizetti's ebullient comedy The Elixir of Love sets a celebratory tone as Houston Grand Opera's (HGO) 62nd season opener on October 21. The colorful production features tenor Dimitri Pittas and soprano Nicole Heaston, as well as the HGO debut of eminent English conductor Jane Glover. Performances run through November 4.  

On October 10, Soprano Melissa Wimbish makes her DCINY Artist Series solo debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, in a performance featuring the American contemporary vocal music of Jake Heggie, Andre Previn, Jessica Meyer, Tom Cipullo, and Gregory Spears. The concert highlights new contemporary vocal works including the world premiere of Meyers' Space In Chains.

The Dallas Opera is very proud to present the eagerly anticipated revival of an historic Dallas Opera production: Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's critically acclaimed twenty-first century masterpiece: MOBY-DICK, starring world-renowned heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab.

Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced a change to its 2016-2017 season programming: Don Giovanni in Concert will replace the previously scheduled Stars of Tomorrow concert on Friday, March 17, 2017 in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Instead of a traditional showcase featuring arias and scenes from different operas, members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program will now present a semi-staged concert performance of Mozart's timeless drama, with the WNO Orchestra conducted by Michael Christie and featuring direction by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello.

Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) is proud to announce its seventh season, beginning in October of 2017.

Milwaukee, WI -- The Florentine continues to craft its seasons with a blend of imaginatively staged classic operas and important new American works. The nation's sixth oldest opera company will launch the 83rd Season with the world premiere of SISTER CARRIE, a new work by the two-time Grammy Award-winning creators of Elmer Gantry.

Donizetti's ebullient comedy The Elixir of Love sets a celebratory tone as Houston Grand Opera's (HGO) 62nd season opener on October 21.

Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) opens its seventh season on Friday October 7, 2016 with Fin de Siecle, the first of five concerts in the ambitious series Wien. This concert is the first in BASS's new primary venue, the Brooklyn Historical Society. Fin de Siecle features four composers who epitomize the opulence and decadence of late German Romanticism: Joseph Marx, Hans Pfitzner, Richard Strauss, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Highlights from the program include Pfitzner's extended masterpiece An den Mond and Richard Strauss's beloved Vier letze Lieder (Four Last Songs). The seven first-class performers include soprano Tami Petty (winner, Joy in Singing) and baritone Tobias Greenhalgh (Wiener Kammeropera). There will also be a pre-concert lecture by esteemed New York University professor Larry Wolff at 7:00 entitled "Art and Politics in Fin de Siecle Vienna."

Following her summer role debut in Santa Fe as Clairon in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham - hailed by Gramophone as 'America's favorite mezzo' - launched the 2016-17 season with Renée Fleming and Michael Tilson Thomas performing Rossini songs in the San Francisco Symphony's opening night gala.

Houston Grand Opera (HGO) will offer New Yorkers a preview performance of excerpts from a new opera based on the classic story and Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life on Sunday, November 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Guggenheim Museum, as part of the museum's Works & Process program. The evening will include a discussion with the composer/librettist team of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, moderated by HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers.

Encompass New Opera Theatre and Gala Honorary Chairs Zoe Caldwell, Sheldon Harnick, John Kander, and Maury Yeston will honor legendary songwriting team LYNN AHRENS and STEPHEN FLAHERTY and playwright TERRENCE MCNALLY (Ragtime, Chita Rivera: A Dancer's Life, A Man of No Importance, and their upcoming Broadway musical, Anastasia) with a star-studded musical salute on Sunday, October 23.

Following her summer role debut in Santa Fe as Clairon in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham - hailed by Gramophone as 'America's favorite mezzo' - launched the 2016-17 season with Renée Fleming and Michael Tilson Thomas performing Rossini songs in the San Francisco Symphony's opening night gala.

The Dallas Opera is thrilled to announce the fourteenth in a series of free public simulcasts, this time involving a game-changing Dallas Opera production: Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's critically acclaimed twenty-first century masterpiece: MOBY-DICK, starring world-renowned helden tenorJay Hunter Morris as Captain Ahab.

Washington National Opera (WNO) opens its 2016-2017 season with a new-to-Washington staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's masterpiece of romantic comedy-The Marriage of Figaro, September 22-October 2, 2016, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. One of opera's most enduring and beloved classics, The Marriage of Figaro tells an upstairs/downstairs story of love, lust, seduction, infidelity, and ultimately, forgiveness, all set to some of the most sublime and memorable music ever written.

The multiple GRAMMY-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is widely recognized as one of the world's great opera singers.

Tenor Peter Marsh, who makes his Seattle Opera debut as the villainous Hexe in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel next month, shares his insights on the subject

The multiple GRAMMY-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is widely recognized as one of the world's great opera singers. The New Yorker has proclaimed her “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation,” and The New York Times has described her as “the perfect 21st-century diva—an effortless combination of glamour, charisma, intelligence, grace and remarkable talent.” She is known not only for her extraordinary virtuosity, but also for her impassioned social engagement. Perhaps more than any project in her career to date, DiDonato's new album, In War and Peace: Harmony through Music, epitomizes this combination of qualities. The collection of Baroque arias arose from her pondering the question, in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris and Brussels, “In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?” DiDonato hopes the album, out November 4 on Erato / Warner Classics, and concert presentation, with which she will tour 12 countries between November 2016 and June 2017, will help listeners answer the same question. Please see below for an itinerary of live performances.

Three dazzling new opera productions are at the core of the inaugural Vancouver Opera Festival, April 28 to May 13, 2017. Full-scale productions of Giuseppe Verdi's late-career masterpiece Otello, featuring powerful tenor Clifton Forbis in the title role, and Jake Heggie's modern classic Dead Man Walking, with charismatic bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch as Joseph De Rocher, will be presented in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

On October 10, Soprano Melissa Wimbish makes her DCINY Artist Series solo debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, in a performance featuring the American contemporary vocal music of Jake Heggie, Andre Previn, Jessica Meyer, Tom Cipullo, and Gregory Spears. The concert highlights new contemporary vocal works including the world premiere of Meyers' Space In Chains.