Before It All Goes Dark
EuroArts • April 25, 2025
On the heels of its critically acclaimed world premiere tour, Before It All Goes Dark, a one-act opera about Nazi-looted art by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, will reach new audiences as a film and album this spring. Commissioned by Music of Remembrance and based on reporting by legendary Chicago journalist Howard Reich, the work examines the generational impacts of the Holocaust. Fittingly, EuroArts will release the film and album on April 25, 2025, just before the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe.
The plot is based on the compelling true story of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, a gravely ill and deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran, which was first reported by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune. Mac grew up poor, angry, and disenfranchised in the suburbs of Chicago, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him – until Reich tracked him down as part of an investigation inspired by his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust. When Mac learned that he was heir to a priceless art collection stolen by the Nazis, the two men embarked on a quest to Eastern Europe to uncover secrets of the past.
The prologue to the opera is set in the vibrant salon of Mac’s ancestor Emil Freund in Prague in the early 1930s, surrounded by projections of the looted art and the sounds of chamber music – all written by Jewish composers of the period who would ultimately perish in Nazi camps. The action then moves to Mac’s sparse, dark apartment in Chicagoland 63 years later, drawing a sharp distinction between Mac’s reality and the astonishing world of color, identity, and connection embodied by Freund’s collection.
Credits
Music by Jake Heggie
Libretto by Gene Scheer
Joseph Mechavich conductor
Erich Parce director
Peter Crompton scenic designer
Dmitriy Lipay recording engineer
Andrew Mayatskiy video editor
Ryan McKinny Gerald ‘Mac’ McDonald
Megan Marino Misha, Sally, Emil
Music of Remembrance Ensemble
Laura DeLuca clarinet
Jessica Choe piano
Mikhail Shmidt violin
Eric Han cello
Demarre McGill flute
Susan Gulkis Assadi viola
Jonathan Green double bass
TrackList
Prologue (15 min)
1. David Beigelman, Text by lsaiah Shpigl: Makh tsu di Eygelekh
2. Robert Dauber: Serenata
3. Erwin Schulhoff: Duo for Violin and Cello - II. Zingaresca
4. Erwin Schulhoff: Sonata for Flute and Piano - III. Aria. Andante
5. Erwin Schulhoff: Jazz Etudes for Solo Piano – Tango
6. Erwin Schulhoff: Concertino for Flute, Viola and Double Bass - IV. Rondino. Allegro gaio
Opera (45 min)
7. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Scene 1 “Mac’s Apartment”
8. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Aria “Something beautiful”
9. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Scene 2 Manesova Street, Prague
10. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Aria: “A prisoner of her past”
11. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: “You like art”
12. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: “There was talk”
13. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Scene 3 The Train to Lodz 1939
14. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Scene 4 Jewish Museum in Prague
15. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Aria “Uncle Emil!”
16. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: “Where’s the Museum Director”
17. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Transition Wall of Remembrance and Journey Home
18. Heggie: Before It All Goes Dark: Scene 5 Return to Mac’s Apartment
Program Note
Jake Heggie & Gene Scheer
It has been a thrilling and transformative journey to collaborate with Music of Remembrance over the past 17 years — to create stage works that give voice to unknown stories of the Holocaust, including For a Look or a Touch (2007), Another Sunrise (2012), Farewell, Auschwitz (2013) and Two Remain (2016). Artistic Director Mina Miller has been an inspirational guide for us, and we have grown tremendously thanks to her vision and leadership. So we were incredibly energized to explore and create a new work for MOR.
The story we found is unlike any other we had heard. Gerald “Mac” McDonald was a deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran who suffered from PTSD and Hep-C, among many devastating physical ailments. He grew up poor, angry, and disenfranchised in the Chicago suburb of Lyons, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him. In 2001, thanks to Howard Reich at the Chicago Tribune, he discovered he was the sole living descendent of Emil Freund, a prominent Jewish businessman murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Mac was also the sole heir to Emil’s priceless art collection, which had languished for 60 years in a warehouse in Prague.
All of this was a total surprise to Mac. In 2002, he borrowed and scraped to travel to Prague to uncover the secrets of his past and claim his inheritance, only to find the Czech Republic had declared the art collection a national treasure that would not be allowed to leave the country. A frustrating path, but an inspirational journey, because seeing Emil’s 30 paintings, learning of his life and death, walking in his path, Mac connected with an identity and story that touched and changed him profoundly. Howard Reich reported this story in a series of articles titled “Mac’s Journey” in the Chicago Tribune in 2001 and 2002. He traveled with Mac to Prague and Łódź to chronicle the event.
Our one-act opera features Mac and another singer — a mezzo — who inhabits three roles: Sally (a neighbor), Misha (curator at the Jewish Museum in Prague), and Emil Freund. The arc of the piece takes us from Mac’s sparse, dark apartment to the astonishing world of color, identity and connection in Emil’s paintings at the Jewish Museum in Prague. The ensemble of seven instruments includes flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, bass and piano.
With a one-act opera, there’s always the question of what to program with it. Mina Miller had the brilliant idea of beginning the evening with a chamber music salon in Emil Freund’s lavish apartment on the still fashionable Manesova Street; a location Mac visited on his journey through Prague.
So to begin our evening, imagine you are in Emil’s stunning salon, surrounded by artworks from some of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. Just a few feet away, gifted instrumentalists perform new, exciting works that have just been composed by Czech composers who would also ultimately perish in the camps. This is where our performance begins, with music that well might have been played in Emil Freund’s apartment.
Critical Acclaim
“Jake Heggie, a composer singularly attuned to the power of narrative, knows when a great story has found him. A striking fusion of intensity and emotional range, historical context and dramatic immediacy. In a moment of eponymous foreshadowing, Mac, fully embodied by Ryan McKinny, seems poised at a fraught precipice — ‘the last thing you reach for, before it all goes dark.’ Heggie spins out the line in a long, poignant melisma that links Mac to his Jewish Uncle Emil, who collected the art before the Nazis took his paintings as well as his life. The evening delivered a rich experience… An expansive story of layered themes that both captures and transcends its source material.” –San Francisco Classical Voice
“The musical forces of Before It All Goes Dark are small but the impact could hardly have been more potent. Vividly portrayed by McKinny, Mac finds redemption of sorts at the end. But thanks to Scheer’s tightly focused libretto and Heggie’s evocative music, the wounds he suffers along the way resonate long after we leave the theater. The opera’s impact stems from the intimate simplicity of Heggie’s music and Scheer’s straightforward prose. The opera’s topic may be vast – the centuries-old hatreds that caused generations of a Jewish family to hide its past, the 20th-century antisemitism that loots an art collection and then denies an heir his rightful inheritance. But the focus is tight – how one man, Mac, has been irrevocably scarred by his family’s secrecy. Some of the libretto quotes directly from Reich’s interviews with Mac. By searingly exploring one man’s wounded heart, the work leaves us thinking of larger, universal issues of identity and acceptance.” –Musical America
“‘Before It All Goes Dark’ is a remarkable work and a memorable one. This new, small opera is an incredible journey of transformation for Mac and a powerful drama set beautifully to music. Heggie’s music captures Mac’s despair when we first encounter him, and it develops slowly, like a smoldering fire that takes time to burst into flame. When Mac cries out to Emil, trying to understand the horrible course of his life, and grieving his death, it is a catharsis of immense power. Librettist Scheer has pared down Mac’s story from Howard Reich’s two-part Tribune series. He employs clear, plain language, rather than a more poetic turn, and this brings out the rough-edged Mac effectively. The beauty of the opera is that Mac does not remain a tourist in his own new life. He embraces Emil as a tragic ancestor and has an awakening when he studies some of the paintings in a collection that had been described as priceless. He takes nothing physically tangible from this experience — no family art or artifacts — yet he returns home a much richer man, even if still frustrated and angry.” –Hyde Park Herald
“The opera itself, in rough Chicago vernacular laced with expletives, expressed with muscular clarity by the principal singers, is a compact and relatively short piece. ‘Before It All Goes Dark’ has unquestionably captured something uniquely Chicago, yet universal in its emotional appeal.” –Buzz Center Stage
“This opera is special in that it turns the story itself into artwork. With an inclusive concert of Holocaust-era music and projections that illuminate the audience with the power of art to transform, it lifts the performance out of the tragic history and gifts us with the lasting treasury of the paintings themselves.” –Splash Magazines
“A new art form graced San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre – a collaborative work that interweaves related themes in a salon and an opera. The structure allows for a compelling theme – art deprivation as the result of the Holocaust – to resonate to the maximum. Before It All Goes Dark is worthy of many more performances.” –Aisle Seat Review
“A tremendous achievement... The score played an active role in the drama, especially in the instrumental parts that connected the scenes, and Scheer’s libretto was truly a great asset. The greatest contributions to the success of this premiere tour were the two soloists, both of whom gave their heart and soul to bring the story to life. Before It All Goes Dark not only teaches the dangers of letting history repeat itself, but also demonstrates the transformative power of Art.” –Parterre Box
“Before It All Goes Dark may be small in scale, but it packed an emotional punch. Librettist Scheer turns Reich’s stories into a poetic journey of self-discovery for Mac that demonstrates the transformative power of art. The score was trademark Heggie in its contemporary yet approachable style, inflected with elements of the blues and rock ’n roll. Just off his star turn as Joseph De Rocher in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at the Metropolitan Opera, McKinny lent his powerful bass-baritone to the similarly troubled role of Mac. Heggie once again has written an appealing mezzo part that displayed Marino’s solid yet malleable voice to the best effect. A standout musical and dramatic moment came when Mac is shown Emil’s art collection in the basement of the museum. Looking at the artwork Emil lovingly and carefully selected, Mac wonders what it must be like to be chosen and loved—something missing from his childhood. The projections on the back wall came to life as animated images of Emil’s paintings and light swirled around the auditorium like an immersive art installation.” –Chicago Classical Review
“Music of Remembrance staged the premiere of a bare-bones, brooding chamber opera by Jake Heggie, Before It All Goes Dark. A simple, sincere narrative had a direct emotional effect due to its being sparingly scored and staged. Once Mac confronts the art and grapples with its expressive power, the story and music achieve an extraordinarily quiet and sweetly unsettling climax. It was here that Heggie’s score flourished, undulating with waves of eloquently pungent harmonies and orchestral colour. The towering performance of McKinny as Mac was an eloquently poignant performance with universal echoes, despite the chamber scale of this touching new opera.” –Opera Magazine