American composer Jake Heggie is best known for Dead Man Walking (2000), the most widely performed new opera of the last 26 years, with a libretto by Terrence McNally, and his critically acclaimed operas Moby-Dick (2010), Three Decembers (2008), and It’s a Wonderful Life (2016), all with libretti by Gene Scheer. In addition to 11 full-length operas and numerous one-acts, Heggie has composed more than 300 art songs, as well as concerti, chamber music, choral, and orchestral works. His compositions have been performed on five continents, and he regularly collaborates with some of the world’s most beloved artists. The world premiere of Heggie’s opera Intelligence (2023) won Best Opera Recording at the 2026 Grammy® Awards and he is proud to serve as the Diane B. Wilsey Distinguished Professor of Composition at San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Heggie opens the 26/27 season with The Judgment of Paris, his most recent collaboration with longtime librettist Gene Scheer. Inspired by the legendary 1976 blind tasting that transformed the world of wine, the opera premieres in both America and France – as part of Festival Napa Valley’s 20th anniversary season and at Opéra Royal’s Château de Versailles. The Olivier Award-winning production of Dead Man Walking from English National Opera travels to Opera North, while a new production is mounted at the Seagle Festival. Elsewhere, two new productions of Before It All Goes Dark, Heggie’s opera about Nazi-looted art, open at Theater Koblenz and Piedmont Opera, where it will be presented in a double-bill with Another Sunrise during the company’s 50th anniversary season. The monodrama Earth 2.0, written for countertenor Key’mon Murrah, opens Aspen Summer Music Festival’s season, before traveling to the Bellingham Festival of Music. Additionally, Heggie works appear at Tulsa Opera, Staunton Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and Zephyr Symphony.

Since 1993, he has made his home in San Francisco, where he lives with his husband, Curt Branom. 

Banner image by James Niebuhr