Photo: © Lloyd Winters Unlike ballet, which has “The Nutcracker” as a festive staple, there aren’t very many Christmas operas. “La bohème” opens on Christmas eve, and there is invariably snow, but yuletide is hardly the subject of the opera. ENO were scheduled to perform John Adams nativity oratorio “El Niño” during lockdown, but it sadly got canned. Along comes {…}
(Photo: Karen Almond/Houston Grand Opera) Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” serves as an operatic successor to the beloved 1946 Frank Capra film of the same name. The libretto, written by Gene Scheer, tells the familiar holiday story of George Bailey’s life crisis and redemption as based on the original text, a short story called “The Greatest Gift” by Philip {…}
Jake Heggie is one of the significant opera composers of the 21st century. Born on March 31, 1961, Heggie grew up in Columbus, Ohio and started studying the piano at age seven. After his father’s suicide in 1972, Heggie began writing music and his family relocated to the San Francisco Bay area. He studied at the UCLA for both his {…}
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” opened earlier this week at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. An American success story based on “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern, and Frank Capra’s beloved film on the same story, it combined old and new, young and original, odd and familiar, poignant and comic. Neither movie nor {…}
The San Francisco Opera Guild will present its sixth annual “An Evening on the Stage” to honor John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn. The event will take place on Nov. 28, 2018. At the event, John Gunn, Chairman of San Francisco Opera’s Board of Director and Cynthia Fry Gunn, an arts patron, will be presented with the Opera Guild’s 2018 {…}
In just a few weeks, the San Francisco Opera will showcase Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In anticipation of the production’s opening, the company held an event on Nov. 1, 2018, to showcase music, story and theme genesis designed for educators and the press. Both Heggie and Scheer were in attendance alongside Dramaturg Kip Cranna, soprano Kearstin {…}
The San Francisco Opera is set to present the West Coast premiere of “It’s a Wonderful Life” by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer in nine holiday-season performances. The opera, scheduled to be performed from Nov. 17 through Dec. 9, is a co-production between San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and {…}
The San Francisco Opera is teaming up with the Compass Family Services and Community Housing Partnership for the “Earn Your Wings” campaign. Both Compass Family Services and Community Housing Partnership help the homeless in San Francisco find stable housing and find economic self-sufficiency. The campaign is inspired by the company’s upcoming “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and during National Hunger and {…}
We spend a lot of time on this site talking about dead composers. And for good reason. Opera wouldn’t exist today if it wasn’t for those great artists of the past. But it’s also important sometimes to shine a spotlight on the artists making headway in today’s conservative opera culture. I call it conservative because despite having more talent in {…}
“Opera Meets Film” is a feature dedicated to exploring the way that opera has been employed in cinema. We will select a section or a film in its entirety, highlighting the impact that utilizing the operatic form or sections from an opera can alter our perception of a film that we are viewing. This week’s installment we will go through {…}
After a week of releases dominated by Maria Callas, European opera lovers are getting a ton of options for quality recordings from the world’s greatest artists. In the US, one major CD release will steal headlines. Duets Rolando Villazón and Ildar Abdrazakov’s new duets, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin will arrive on shelves in the US this week and features duets {…}
