BREAKING THE WAVES Album From Houston Grand Opera Out Now
Lauren Snouffer and Ryan McKinny headline the recording of Tom Morris's staging, released on the HGO label.
Houston Grand Opera has unveiled a new album: the first recording of composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek's seminal opera Breaking the Waves, captured during the acclaimed opera's 2025 regional premiere in Houston. The album is available today—listen/share/order here.
The new recording of the groundbreaking opera, which premiered in 2016, captures outstanding performances from a star-studded cast led by soprano Lauren Snouffer and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, accompanied by the HGO Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of HGO Music Director Emeritus Patrick Summers. The recording documents director Tom Morris' acclaimed production. It marks the third release from the Houston Grand Opera label, created in partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra's LSO Live. The label's first album—for company-commissioned world-premiere opera Intelligence—won the 2026 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.
“Breaking the Waves is a fearless, devastating, and utterly singular landmark of contemporary American opera from one of the most compelling compositional voices of this generation,” says HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor. “Alongside Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, our company's incredible cast, orchestra, and chorus have brought their own fearlessness to this piece, rising to meet its challenges with passionate artistry. This album brilliantly captures the electricity of these sublime live performances, preserving their energy in every measure. HGO launched this label to bring bold American works to the world, and there is no better testament to that mission than what you will hear here.”
“I'm so grateful that Houston Grand Opera has captured this extraordinary cast and creative team in this recording of Breaking the Waves. Opera is an art form that not only takes a village, but a small city, and this performance is filled with artists who gave themselves completely to this emotional, dramatic whirlwind,” says Mazzoli. “In Breaking the Waves I wanted to create a musical landscape that embraces contradiction, where ecstasy and grief coexist, sometimes in the same melody, the same chord.
“At the center is a woman, Bess McNeill, stripped of everything but her body, her inherent goodness and her ideals, to which she remains true,” continues Mazzoli. “Neither heroine nor victim, Bess stands before us as her remarkable self, a character whose devastating complexity comes to life in the operatic medium. This is a story about a woman's agency over her body and her life, and it has been deeply moving to see the fresh urgency and compassion HGO's production brought to this journey. I'm profoundly thankful to the cast, musicians, producers, conductor Patrick Summers, director Tom Morris, and everyone at HGO who made this recording possible.”
“Breaking the Waves is one of the most important operas of the 21st century, a work of incredible beauty, dramatic power, and profound lessons,” says Summers. “I am deeply honored to conduct its first recording.”
Based on the art film by Lars von Trier, Breaking the Waves takes place in 1970s Scotland, where the impressionable young Bess McNeill, part of a strict Calvinist community, wins permission to marry an outsider—the offshore oil rigger Jan Nyman. The young couple embarks upon a journey of sexual exploration that is tragically interrupted when Jan is paralyzed in an accident, setting off a series of shocking events that culminate in a profound act of sacrifice.
Following its 2016 world premiere at Opera Philadelphia, Breaking the Waves won the inaugural Best New Opera Award from the Music Critics Association of North America and was shortlisted for Best World Premiere at the International Opera Awards. It went on to other stages in the U.S. and abroad, with HGO's 2025 presentation a co-production with Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, Théâtre National de l'Opéra Comique, and Adelaide Festival.
The opera was recorded for the first time in spring 2025, during its regional premiere in the Wortham Theater Center's Brown Theater in Houston, Texas. The album showcases masterful performances from a celebrated cast including Snouffer and McKinny as Bess and Jan, soprano Michelle Bradley as Mother, mezzo-soprano Maire Therese Carmack as Dodo McNeill, tenor David Portillo as Dr. Richardson, baritone Michael Mayes as Councilman, bass-baritone Sam Dhobhany as Terry, bass Johnny Salvesen as Sadistic Sailor, tenor Andrew Surrena as Young Sailor, and Jon Janacek as Tenor Solo.
The new Breaking the Waves album is available in both physical and digital formats, with streaming offered on major platforms including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
The Breaking the Waves recording is the latest addition to HGO's expanding catalogue of new and remastered recordings, part of the company's ongoing effort to preserve and share major performances and commissioned works with audiences around the world. The label's first releases were of Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's company-commissioned world-premiere opera Intelligence, which won a 2026 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording; and Daniel Catán and Marcela Fuentes-Berain's Florencia en el Amazonas, another company-commissioned world premiere. On the horizon is Javier Martínez and Leonard Foglia's HGO-commissioned mariachi opera El Milagro del Recuerdo.
Photo Credit: Lynn Lane
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