San Francisco Classical Voice

Red, White, and Grand Cru — Napa Will Get an Opera About Wine Tasting
July 2026

The Judgment of Paris, the subject of librettist Gene Scheer and composer Jake Heggie’s latest opera, is not the mythological contest that led to the Trojan War. It’s the informal name of the 1976 blind tasting when judges rated Napa wines higher than French ones for the first time.  It’s a perfect story for Festival Napa Valley, so the pair readily agreed when Festival Vice President and Director of Artistic Planning Charles Letourneau asked them to write the opera.

Heggie said he’s always loved the human voice from jazz to pop to musical theater to rock and roll. He didn’t hear opera until his late teens, and those voices “blew the top of my head off.”

The composer is known for his talent in writing for singers, and he says he’s thrilled to be writing for the show’s great cast, most of whom are friends.

“When I'm writing an opera and there's a great character, and then I find out I'm writing it for this amazing singer  there's just joy from the first moment.”