Five Verismo Clients Earn Grammy Nods • November 2025
Composer Jake Heggie’s opera Intelligence has been nominated for Best Opera Recording, with Blanton Alspaugh receiving a nomination for Classical Producer of the Year. Based on the little-known true story of two women who infiltrated the Confederate White House and ran a Union spy ring during the American Civil War, the live recording was captured during the world-premiere run and features the original cast, led by Jamie Barton, Janai Brugger, and J’Nai Bridges.
Before It All Goes Dark, also by Heggie and Gene Scheer, is nominated for Classical Producer of the Year (Dmitriy Lipay). The one-act opera, commissioned by Music of Remembrance and starring Ryan McKinny and Megan Marino, 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.
Select Acclaim for Intelligence
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Intelligence
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Limelight Magazine: October Recording of the Month
The New York Times: In an Opera About Civil War Spies, Dancers Help Drive the Drama
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ArtsATL: Jamie Barton talks about debut recording of Jake Heggie’s ‘Intelligence’
“Heggie launches the opera on a tidal wave of thunderous power, which gives an idea of the tense spy soundtrack to come. Plenty of the high-stakes emotional drama that works well in opera. An outstanding cast gave Intelligence a full-throttle lift-off.”
–Financial Times
“Heggie and Scheer probe the unhealing wound that runs deep in the United States then and now: slavery. Heggie is a master of music-drama, with a gift for setting words and musical style.”
–BBC Music Magazine
“Heggie’s ‘Intelligence’ ignites with drama, melody, and star power – a real spy thriller with danger, high-risk situations, and a surprising finale. Some dancing sequences underscore the semi-mythological atmosphere.”
–EarRelevant
“A work of remarkable theatrical power and musical sophistication. What emerges is opera at its most compelling: a work that honours both historical truth and musical craft.”
–Yorkshire Times
“Heggie’s vocal lines are a miracle of elegance and craft. It’s a heady melting pot that Heggie binds seamlessly into a cohesive whole, and it is also an action-packed thriller. Barton’s is a masterful creation, warm and tyrannical by turns. The recording has immediacy and depth.”
–Limelight Magazine
“A miraculous fusion of lyrical lift and expository clarity. This is a darker, more nervous, haunted and contemporary soundscape. We hear a composer who has the skill and inspiration to reinvent his own idiom once again, with powerful results.”
–Gramophone
Select Acclaim for Before It All Goes Dark
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Before It All Goes Dark
Seattle Times: Vietnam War vet discovers he’s heir to art stolen by Nazis; now it’s an opera
Chicago Tribune: Tribune story about Nazi-looted artwork gets the operatic treatment
NBC 5 Chicago: ‘Before it all Goes Dark' to close out season at the Chicago Opera Theater
WBEZ: From Chicago headlines, an eminent composer births a new opera about Nazi-looted art
Financial Times: Heggie’s opera about Nazi-looted art gets its first recording
“With its seven-piece chamber ensemble, the opera proper follows almost seamlessly. Infected by nostalgia, pain, impatient longing and trepidation, Heggie's music builds meaningfully towards the climactic moment when Mac finally sees the paintings in Prague. McKinny is marvellous as Mac. In a moving and powerful performance, his strong, mellifluous bass-baritone conveys acute intimations of agony, foreboding and rapture.”
–Opera Magazine
“Heggie's music starts out as businesslike narrative, but when Mac sees the paintings for the first time it enters another world, communing with an unknown forebear in a spirit of disbelief and shared pain.”
–Financial Times
“The opera delivers a hefty emotional wallop.”
–Santa Fe New Mexican
“Composing for Music of Remembrance’s tight seven-piece pit, Heggie threads themes from the first scene throughout the whole opera. When McDonald is talking about his hidden Jewish heritage, he is accompanied by a single, lonely clarinet. Later on, Heggie viscerally orchestrates the shiver we hear – and feel – when McDonald lays eyes on his art for the first time.”
–Opera Now