Review: Houston Grand Opera premieres Jake Heggie’s new opera

HOUSTON — Originally an aristocratic diversion, opera in the 19th century became popular entertainment, and in the 20th — especially in Europe — intellectual challenge. That’s oversimplification, of course, especially as there’s been a parallel 20th- and 21st-century thread of populist operas.

The most successful American operatic populist today — successor to Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Carlisle Floyd — must surely be Jake Heggie. His widely performed first opera, Dead Man Walking, opened the 2023-24 Metropolitan Opera season.

He’s been especially popular in Texas, where the Dallas Opera and Houston Grand Opera have commissioned six of his operas. Dallas commissioned and premiered Moby-Dick and Great Scott. Fort Worth Opera has performed Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers and Again.

HGO’s newest Heggie commission, Intelligence, opened Oct. 20 at the Wortham Center’s Brown Theater. A true Civil War story has been elaborated by librettist Gene Scheer (also the librettist of Joby Talbot’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, to be premiered by the Dallas Opera on Nov. 3.). The third partner in the creative team is Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, who doubles as stage director and choreographer of dancers from her Urban Bush Women company.

As the opera begins, the Confederacy’s days are numbered, but battles are still being fought. Elizabeth Van Lew, the well-to-do daughter of a late slaveowner, has freed her family’s slaves and helped others — and even Union soldiers — escape. But two former slaves remain as servants: Mary Jane Bowser and her husband, Wilson.

Unusually, Mary Jane was baptized and married in a Richmond church for whites, and sent north to be educated. But she can pretend to be illiterate, in which guise she gets a job in Jefferson Davis’ Confederate White House. From there she can discover and secretly convey Confederate army plans — intelligence.

Travis Briggs, a Confederate Home Guard, strongly suspects Elizabeth and Mary Jane are helping the North, and he tries every trick to dig up evidence. Elizabeth’s sister-in-law Callie Van Lew, who may be having a fling with Travis, also has her suspicions.

Another character, Lucinda, first seems to be a former (or escaped) slave who somehow knows a lot about Mary Jane. As the opera progresses, Lucinda, apparently visible only to Mary Jane, is finally revealed as the ghost of Mary Jane’s mother. Increasingly dubious of what she’s been told of her origins, Mary Jane angrily confronts Elizabeth, who confesses her family’s shame: She and Mary Jane are, ahem, sisters.

The dancers represent a collective Black unconscious and history shadowing Mary Jane, and sometimes urging her on. In two episodes they stylize brilliantly colored African dances.

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.

With possibly one exception, it’s hard to imagine a cast more fastidiously balanced or more dramatically compelling than Houston’s. Janai Brugger’s lambent soprano gives voice to Mary Jane’s sturdy decency, sweetly caressing intimacies elsewhere and ultimately rising in apt fury at deceptions.

Jamie Barton’s Elizabeth is a no-nonsense Southern grande dame, her finely finished mezzo dipping into gutsy chest voice at just the right moments. When she sings “Bless your heart” you know exactly what she means.

With a radiant soprano, J’Nai Bridges captures Lucinda’s care as well as mystery. Michael Mayes, as Travis, is a conniving brute, his baritone appropriately roughhewn.

Caitlin Lynch gives Callie the sweet soprano for a Southern belle not to be trusted. Bass-baritone Nicholas Newton is sonorously as well as physically imposing as Davis’ well-intentioned but delusional butler. Joshua Blue, as Wilson, supplies a densely textured tenor that gets a bit strident on top.

Between the cast and Zollar’s direction, the dramatis personae certainly come to life. And while dancers are unusual onstage counterpoints to the action of an opera, Zollar’s group is plausibly energizing.

At the Oct. 22 matinee I was less convinced by the extended African dance episode, virtuosically as it was leapt, spun and shimmied, and brilliantly as it was costumed. (Carlos Soto is credited as the production’s original costume designer, Clair Hummel as costume realizer and designer of the dance costumes.) With lots of booming percussion, the longer episode doesn’t so much propel the opera as seem a gratuitous, or at least overlong, interruption.

Set designer Mimi Lien provides a movable framework structure and suspended panels on which projection designer Wendell K. Harrington variously evokes battle, plantation grandeur and bold kente cloth patterns. John Torres’ lighting favors strategic focus over broad washes.

In the Oct. 22 performance, conductor Kwamé Ryan had the orchestra vividly realizing bright flashes and subtle colors, with careful attention to singers.

As one expects of Heggie and Scheer, Intelligence evinces theatrical and musical experience and skill. Is it great art? Time must pass that judgment. But for its two hours and 40 minutes, including an intermission, I was glad to have made the trip.

Details

Intelligence repeats at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28, Nov. 1 and 3 at the Wortham Center’s Brown Theater, 501 Texas Ave., Houston. $25 to $335. 713-228-6737, houstongrandopera.org.