Jake Heggie
Jake Heggie is an American composer of opera, vocal, orchestral, and chamber music. He is best known for his operas and art songs as well as for his collaborations with internationally renowned performers and writers.
Biography
Childhood
John Stephen Heggie was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, to Judith and John Francis Heggie, the third of four children. His father was a physician and an amateur saxophonist, and his mother was a nurse. Shortly after Heggie's birth, his family relocated to Columbus, Ohio. He began studying piano when he was seven years old.In 1972, Heggie's father committed suicide after a long battle with depression. Shortly thereafter, Heggie began writing music. A few years after his father's death, the family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Heggie completed high school and continued his studies in piano.
Education and musical training
As a teenager, Heggie studied composition privately with Ernst Bacon from 1977 to 1979. After graduating from high school, he spent two years studying at the American University in Paris. He later continued his studies at University of California, Los Angeles, where his teachers included Roger Bourland, Paul Des Marais, David Raksin, and Paul Reale. He graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Arts in 1984 and returned for graduate school from 1986 to 1988, where he won the Henry Mancini Award in 1987.Heggie's most significant teacher during his studies at UCLA was Johana Harris, widow of composer Roy Harris.
"She was a magnificent teacher, a brilliant artist in every way, and she was nurturing and encouraging," said Heggie in a 2015 interview with Opera News. "She wanted you to have a broad recognition of what the world had to offer in literature, music, art, food, and daily life. She was all about unleashing inspiration, trusting instincts, opening up your heart and soul to possibility. And she saw something in me as an artist and as a composer that I didn't see or recognize in myself."
Early career
Upon graduating, Heggie and Harris toured the country as a performing duo until 1989, when Heggie started to notice pain in his right hand. These symptoms would lead to Heggie being diagnosed with focal dystonia, a neurological condition affecting a specific part of the body – in this case, Heggie's right hand – causing involuntary muscular contractions. Unable to continue playing the piano, Heggie pursued a career in public relations, working for the UCLA Performing Center for the Arts.In consideration of Harris' failing health and Heggie's desire to relocate to San Francisco from Los Angeles, the couple made the mutual decision to separate but remain married. In 1993, Heggie moved to San Francisco, where he and Harris would stay friends until her death from cancer in 1995.
Heggie worked briefly as a public relations writer for Cal Performances at UC Berkeley in 1993 before being hired by San Francisco Opera the following year as the company's Public Relations Associate, a position previously held by novelist Armistead Maupin. After being hired, Heggie began composing again, and the focal dystonia in his hand lessened to the extent that he could begin rehabilitating his piano playing. His job at San Francisco Opera allowed him the opportunity to interact with key collaborators – including singers, conductors and administrators – who might be interested in performing his music and collaborating on future compositions.
In the fall of 1994, Heggie began a friendship with mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade when she starred in the world premiere of Conrad Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons. On opening night, he decided to give her Three Folk Songs as a gift, and when Heggie visited von Stade during intermission, she was playing the arrangements at the piano. She became an enthusiastic champion of his work and suggested that they begin performing together in recital. In 1995, with von Stade's encouragement, Heggie entered the Schirmer American Art Song Competition and won with "If you were coming in the fall...".
Lotfi Mansouri, then the General Director of San Francisco Opera, asked Heggie at a cocktail party if he had ever thought about writing an opera. The next day he called Heggie into his office.
"I really thought it was going to be about a new press release so I brought my notepad," Heggie told the Nob Hill Gazette in a 2013 interview. " said, 'We have an opening in the 2000 season, and I am going to send you to New York to talk to Terrence McNally because we've wanted to work with him, and I think you two would really hit it off and could come up with something amazing.' Everyone was stunned, but no one more than I – that he was offering a guy on his PR staff the chance to write a full-length opera, when he could have his choice of any composer on the planet."
At the close of the 1997 season, Heggie resigned from his position as the Public Relations Associate, and Mansouri named him the CHASE Composer-in-Residence for San Francisco Opera, a two-year position created especially for him so that he could write Dead Man Walking. The creation of Dead Man Walking would launch Heggie's international career as an opera composer.
Career
Operas
Heggie is most known for his contributions to the American operatic repertoire. Hailed by the Associated Press as "one of the pre-eminent contemporary opera composers," his operas have entered the standard repertory with the likes of American composers Carlisle Floyd, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Douglas Moore, as well as with those of his contemporaries. Heggie describes himself as a theatre composer who is concerned with "serving drama" and "exploring character."''Dead Man Walking''
Dead Man Walking, with a libretto by Terrence McNally, is an opera in two acts. Based on the narrative book by Sister Helen Prejean, it tells the story of a Louisiana nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on Angola's death row. Commissioned by San Francisco Opera, the opera received its highly acclaimed first performance at the War Memorial Opera House on October 7, 2000, in a production that starred Susan Graham, John Packard, and Frederica von Stade, with conductor Patrick Summers leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. It was directed by Joe Mantello and designed by Michael Yeargan, with lighting by Jennifer Tipton and costumes by Sam Flemming. Due to popular demand, the original production of seven performances was increased to nine, most of them completely sold out. The original version of Dead Man Walking was revised during the East Coast premiere at New York City Opera in September 2002.At present, Dead Man Walking has been seen internationally in more than 70 productions on five continents. It has received two live recordings: the first on ERATO of the original cast in 2000 and the second on Virgin Classics from Houston Grand Opera in 2011, starring Joyce DiDonato, Philip Cutlip, and Frederica von Stade. The creation of the opera was the subject of a documentary, And Then One Night: The Making of Dead Man Walking, which aired nationally on PBS in 2002. 'Dead Man Walking'is scheduled to have its Metropolitan Opera debut in 2021 in a new production by Ivo Van Hove, conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
Several productions of Dead Man Walking have been created, including a widely performed version by director Leonard Foglia with designs by Michael McGarty. The first European production was at the Dresden Semperoper in 2006, directed by Niklaus Lehnhoff and repeated at Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 2007. The Australian premiere at the 2003 Adelaide Festival featured the original production by Joe Mantello, while the Canadian premiere at the Calgary Opera in 2006 featured a new production by Kelly Robinson. Over the years, additional productions have been mounted by companies in Sweden, Ireland, Germany, South Africa, Montreal, and recently in the United States by Opera Parallèle in San Francisco, as well as companies in Boston, St. Louis, Eugene, Central City, Des Moines, and at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. In 2008, a reduced orchestration was created for a production at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. That orchestration was further edited in 2013 and is now widely used.
Other early operas
Again was commissioned and premiered by the EOS Orchestra in 2000, shortly before the premiere of Dead Man Walking. The opera involved domestic abuse and the four main characters from the television sitcom I Love Lucy in the context that Ricky Ricardo had become physically abusive toward his wife, Lucy.The End of the Affair, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera in 2003 with a libretto by playwright Heather McDonald, is based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene. Set in London during and just after World War II, the opera tells the story of Maurice Bendrix, a writer involved in an illicit love affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a public servant. During one of their trysts, an air raid occurs: a bomb explodes that destroys the house and knocks Maurice unconscious. When Maurice comes to, Sarah leaves abruptly and vows never to see him again. Obsessed, jealous and angry, Maurice sets upon a journey to discover what happened and why he was abandoned that day. The work received its premiere in March 2004 at Houston Grand Opera. The opera was then extensively revised with additional libretto material added by Heggie and director Leonard Foglia. The revised opera was performed at the Madison Opera in 2005, with further revisions made by Heggie and Foglia that same year at the Seattle Opera.
In 2005, Heggie and McNally collaborated on At the Statue of Venus, commissioned by Opera Colorado to celebrate the opening of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Deemed "an operatic scene for soprano and piano," At the Statue of Venus is inspired by the great concert scenas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Britten: an attractive woman waits in a museum by a statue of the Goddess of Love to meet a man she has never seen. Soprano Talise Trevigne has recorded the opera in its entirety, and its aria "A Lucky Child" is frequently performed in recital.
To Hell and Back was commissioned in 2006 by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra to celebrate its 25th season, and the 20th anniversary of music director Nicholas McGegan. With a libretto by Gene Scheer, the opera is based on the Greco-Roman myth of Persephone, the goddess of spring, who was abducted to the underworld by the god Pluto and must spend half the year with him there. Scheer based his text on the story as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, formulating a modern tale inspired by the many versions of the Persephone myth and modern stories of spousal abuse. The opera was written for and performed by soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and Broadway star Patti LuPone.
Three Decembers was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera in 2008. Originally slated to be a commercial musical theatre production with music by Heggie, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and a book by Terrence McNally, the story manifested on the operatic stage after Schwartz withdrew to collaborate with Alan Menken on the 2007 film Enchanted. Based on Terrence McNally's unpublished script Some Christmas Letters and with a libretto by Gene Scheer, Three Decembers tells the story of a famous stage actress and her two adult children over three decades of the AIDS crisis, each year recalling the events of a December as the characters struggle to connect when family secrets are revealed. Originally titled Last Acts, the opera was recorded live at the 2008 premiere and then revised. Currently, the revised work has not yet been recorded.