Intelligence • Press Coverage
Featured Coverage
BBC Music Magazine: Jake Heggie: A life less ordinary
Opera News: Strength, power & kindness
Houston Matters: A new opera celebrates two hidden figures of Civil War history
SF Chronicle: An adventurous wave of operas is addressing race head-on
Houstonia Magazine: ‘Intelligence’ Shows the Power of New Works
Houston Chronicle: Houston Grand Opera debuts Civil War-themed 'Intelligence'
The New York Times: In an Opera About Civil War Spies, Dancers Help Drive the Drama
AirMail: Heggie opens new seasons at the Met and Houston with first and 10th operas
Opera Now: Risking everything: The story behind Heggie’s ‘Intelligence’
SF Chronicle: Heggie braces for a whirlwind season
Opera Magazine: Composing America
The New York Times: Classical music and opera this fall
CultureMap Houston: HGO's new album captures world-premiere performance
ArtsATL: Jamie Barton talks about debut recording of Jake Heggie’s ‘Intelligence’
Gramophone: Five unmissable new classical albums
Critical Acclaim
“Houston Grand Opera’s season premiere, Intelligence, is not just another opera to take in – it’s an experience to be absorbed. It masterfully fulfills art’s big-picture role: sparking dialogues and bridging emotional divides, even when the discussions are challenging and the ties seem broken…a riveting work realized through the collective genius of Heggie, Scheer, and Zollar. The composer is renowned for tackling challenging subjects head-on. Unveiling an opera in Texas that probes the themes of the Confederacy and slavery was particularly audacious. Heggie’s compositions are approachable and never veer into the abstract. His music offers listeners recognizable motifs and cinematic quality, ensuring an experience that’s engaging rather than challenging. It feels as if Heggie is extending a warm invitation through his melodies, beckoning listeners to immerse themselves in the narrative. The vocal lines artfully shift between rapid patter and rich lyricism, each used judiciously. The opera’s structure feels through-composed, breaking its musical flow only when essential.”
OperaWire
“Houston Grand Opera has a hit with Intelligence, composer Jake Heggie’s groundbreaking new opera about questioning truths. Heggie, librettist Gene Scheer, director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and their superb team of collaborators have delivered a gorgeous, nuanced, layered and suspenseful masterpiece that deftly balances drama and wit. Don’t let the time period fool you; this is an opera even those with 21st century attention spans can get lost in.”
Houston Chronicle
“Heggie and Scheer focus on the characters at the heart of the drama, and on their psychological responses to the system of oppression in which they’ve grown up. In place of a chorus, ‘Intelligence’ deploys the eight dancers of the Brooklyn troupe Urban Bush Women, whose founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, served as the production’s director. The choreography, especially during an extended Act 2 interlude accompanied by percussion only, draws an explicit connection between the enslaved Black population and their African roots — another reminder of the presentness of the past. Nowhere is that more hauntingly inventive than in the work’s opening tableau, when Mary Jane, hanging laundry on the line to dry, is joined by a group of dancers. The snap and flap of bed sheets in the wind turns into an ebullient rhythmic dance, as the drudgery of American labor harks back to African freedom. Heggie’s score, ably conducted in Houston by Kwamé Ryan, is built on these dualities throughout. He draws repeatedly on blues tonalities. Much of what’s most keenly alive in the opera is a tribute to Heggie’s gift for vocal writing. The main characters all emerge as vividly three-dimensional figures; even the two antagonists breathe life through their music.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Heggie’s score anachronistically but evocatively toyed with blues and gospel, accompanied the African style dance with pounding percussion, and provided the singers with supple and often heights-reaching vocal lines.”
Opera Magazine
“Intelligence arrives with superlative pedigree, composed by perhaps America's most acclaimed contemporary composer, Jake Heggie. If an opera company wants to commission a new work, he's probably the first one to get the call. The score is ur-Heggie, propulsive, jagged and taut, prickly and expressive. There's a lot of blues to be heard in the underpinning, befitting the location of Richmond, Virginia. The best music erupts in Act II after Mary Jane questions Elizabeth about her mother. The exuberant dance is the best piece of the night, and Heggie lets loose with an all-percussion score of rhythmic drums, tambourine, and cymbal. For pure sound and dramatic impact, it's amazingly unique.”
Houston Press
“Heggie, Scheer, and Zollar built out the Civil War scenario – the result is an opera that delivers powerful dramatic outpourings. When the spotlight is on the singers, Heggie often sends their voices soaring to embody their emotions, anxieties, and resolve. Elizabeth’s big scene in Act 1, denouncing the hatred and ignorance she saw around her, began with Barton almost unaccompanied, singing with hushed intensity. That made the music all the more arresting as it gradually rose in declamatory force—and as her voice swelled into a flood.”
Texas Classical Review
“As one expects of Heggie and Scheer, Intelligence evinces theatrical and musical experience and skill. Also a prolific art song composer, Heggie writes fluently and effectively for voices. Moments in his orchestral score dramatize wartime turbulence, but the surprise is how much of the music is subtly buoyed by dance rhythms — now a waltz, now jazzy syncopations. Elsewhere are suggestions of spirituals and the blues.”
Dallas Morning News
“Heggie, Scheer, and Zollar’s powerful storytelling ensures that this tale will unfold on opera stages for years to come. The tuneful score twists as quickly as the plot. It moves from slow, sweeping melodic lines to punctuated rhythms and back again, often within a single aria or duet. Heggie playfully incorporates a variety of inspirations and techniques: jazzy chromatics, nods to blues and spirituals, literal tone painting of text, realistic sound effects (most disturbingly, the cracking of whips and clinking of chains), and ironic repetition of motifs. The music often swells to huge proportions, with multiple voices singing fortissimo above crashing percussion, but Heggie balances this with moments of touching simplicity. A stunning Act 2 duet for Callie and Elizabeth (“chained to you,” they sing) layers their voices a cappella for several verses before the orchestra softly joins in.”
San Francisco Classical Voice
Album
“Heggie launches the opera on a tidal wave of thunderous power, which gives an idea of the tense spy soundtrack to come. Much of [Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Jane Bowser’s] story is unknown, so the libretto deals mostly in historical fiction, with 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. And by extension white supremacy. Heggie is a master of music-drama, with a gift for setting words and musical style. In Intelligence, the persistent drumming with its African echoes, the bittersweet Act 2 duet for Elizabeth and her sister-in-law Callie and almost remembered spirituals are entirely his own. By the end, Barton has the measure of Elizabeth, torn between her best political instincts and a dark family secret. Brugger's Mary Jane is scarcely off the stage for two hours, and her final aria 'My Mimma's Eyes' insists that you reach for your conscience.”
BBC Music Magazine
“Heggie’s ‘Intelligence’ ignites with drama, melody, and star power – Being Heggie’s 10th full-length opera, with some significant operas from the past, it’s undoubtedly time to delve deeper into the compositional capacities of this author. What strikes immediately is the extraordinary capacity of Heggie to write pleasant, immediately recognizable tunes well underlined by a sapient orchestration and well written for the voice. It is fun and surely an immediate pleaser for the general public. Generally speaking, the entire story is a real spy thriller with danger, high-risk situations, and a surprising finale. It is also true that the minor characters are well-designed to be powerful, mean when necessary, and, as a Puccini opera teaches us, many of them die dramatically. As a natural part of such a large project, some dancing sequences are incorporated in the form of colorful spirits, underscoring the semi-mythological atmosphere.”
EarRelevant
“From scant surviving facts, Heggie, Scheer, and Jo Zollar (founder of the Urban Bush Women, whose dancers appeared in the show) have fashioned nail-biting melodrama powerfully infused with magical realism. Audio alone can’t convey the supernatural element, but with an assist from the listener’s imagination, the excellent live recording casts a disquieting spell.”
Airmail
“There are episodes of intense drama and poignancy but occasional levity too. Arias and duets seamlessly emerge at strategic moments without disrupting flow. Infused with urgency, Heggie's music mirrors the emotional twists and turns of the action, playful at one moment and yearning at another. Blues, folk, gospel, and jazz flavours blend seamlessly with classical as the splendidly orchestrated score draws on a panoply of moods and styles to illuminate Scheer's text. Lamenting and tumultuous passages are abundant in this wholly entertaining work, and tuneful melodies and motives are likewise plentiful, with many resonating long after the opera's finished.”
Textura
“From its opening dramatic flourishes, Heggie's latest opera demonstrates precisely why the Wall Street Journal has hailed him as ‘arguably the world's most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer.’ This inaugural release captures a work of remarkable theatrical power and musical sophistication. Heggie's compositional mastery is immediately apparent. His melodic lines flow with natural grace, perfectly matching the contours of Scheer's intelligent libretto. The composer demonstrates an uncanny ability to marry dramatic urgency with musical beauty. Each vocal line serves the narrative while maintaining its own lyrical integrity. Ryan's interpretation reveals the score's every nuance, achieving that rare orchestral transparency where dramatic weight never overwhelms vocal clarity. What emerges is opera at its most compelling: a work that honours both historical truth and musical craft. Heggie has created something genuinely rare in contemporary opera—a score that grips from its opening bars and never loosens its hold. Intelligence confirms Heggie's position among America's most significant living opera composers. More importantly, it demonstrates that new opera can indeed captivate audiences when dramatic instinct and musical invention work in perfect harmony.”
Yorkshire Times
“Heggie’s music is immediate and accessible, without ever feeling simplistic or trite. His vocal lines are a miracle of elegance and craft, his melodies stylish and memorable. He taps into a popular vein that reflects both 19th-century music hall and an element of dance. It’s a heady melting pot that Heggie binds seamlessly into a cohesive whole while always remaining attentive to the music’s underlying tension (among Intelligence’s many attributes, it is also an action-packed thriller). The recording has immediacy and depth with voices both well caught and deftly balanced against the orchestra.”
Limelight Magazine
“Heggie’s text-setting, woven into a seamless orchestral narrative, is idiomatic and seemingly effortless, a miraculous fusion of lyrical lift and expository clarity. Reference to the style of Spirituals, folk song and blues harmonies, and a richly variegated and sometimes explosive orchestration, give the opera a distinctive palette. Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess has been cited by some critics as a reference point but this is a darker, more nervous, haunted and contemporary soundscape. Given the exceptional cast and the performances captured, it would be a landmark independent of the world-premiere work it documents. Too many new American operas tend to be written in an uninspired, quasi-Renaissance mould, text-heavy moral exercises that float aimlessly over a soup of orchestral commentary. Heggie’s lyrical gifts and sympathy for the voice keep him happily independent from that trend, and with Intelligence we hear a composer who has the skill and inspiration to reinvent his own idiom once again, with powerful results.”
Gramophone