MAY 25 & 26 | STUDEBAKER THEATER
OPERA IN ONE ACT BASED ON “MAC’S JOURNEY” BY HOWARD REICH, A SERIES PUBLISHED IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE IN 2001/2002 (USED BY PERMISSION)
COMMISSIONED BY MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM THE CLOVIS FOUNDATION THE CHICAGO PREMIERE IS MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM SUSAN & ROBERT SHAPIRO.
Thank you for joining us this weekend as we wrap up Chicago Opera Theater’s monumental 50th Anniversary Season. I can think of no better way to bring our anniversary celebrations to a close than through these very special performances of Before It All Goes Dark, which we are honored to present in collaboration with Music of Remembrance.
Under the inspired leadership of Mina Miller for 25 years, Music of Remembrance has fiercely dedicated itself to commissioning, performing, and recording new works that tell the stories of those persecuted during the Holocaust. Music of Remembrance not only memorializes an important albeit incredibly painful part of history, but also fosters empathy and understanding through the works they champion.
Remembering through music serves as a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the need to confront intolerance and injustice. Music and opera can indeed foster a deeper understanding of the past and a renewed hope for a more compassionate world.
Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, and Howard Reich are far from strangers to Chicago audiences, but their collaboration on Before It All Goes Dark has brought life to a new opera with unexpected ties to our city. As we embark on this voyage together, I thank you for joining us and for your investment in Chicago Opera Theater. Your passion and support make all that we do possible, and for that we are deeply grateful.
With all best wishes,
Lawrence Edelson, Edlis Neeson General Director
PS. While our 50th Anniversary Season comes to an end this weekend, we’ve just announced our 2024/25 season, which features an extraordinary array of performances. We open this Fall with the North American Premiere of Ferdinando Paër’s Leonora, a rarely performed, virtuosic Italian opera that influenced Beethoven, which tells a story about persecution, freedom and the power of love that is as powerful and relevant today as it was when it relevant today as it was when it first premiered in 1804. In December we celebrate the centennial of the death of Giacomo Puccini, one of the most beloved composers of the early 20th century. During the Spring, we get a taste of the future as we showcase a new work developed through our Vanguard Initiative, and we close the season with She Who Dared, a World Premiere by Jasmine Barnes and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton - two of the most exciting artists writing for the opera stage today. Of course, there is no opera without great singers, and we are thrilled to welcome an incredible array of acclaimed local, national and international artists to COT to bring all of these works to life! Visit COT.ORG for complete details, and to learn how you can save up to 20% and get free tickets by subscribing before July 15th!
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer are considered by many to be the most important composer/librettist team in American opera today. Before It All Goes Dark is their fifth commission with Music of Remembrance, and it’s a great honor for us to unveil it as part of our milestone 25th anniversary. The opera’s Chicago connection, based on a compelling story reported by Howard Reich, adds special meaning to our performances here in partnership with COT.
Our collaboration with Heggie and Scheer began almost two decades ago with For a Look or a Touch, the first major musical work to address the Nazi persecution of gay people, and continued five years later with the monodrama Another Sunrise, an intense emotional portrait of an Auschwitz survivor’s struggle to come to terms with her own memory. Heggie and Scheer have a rare talent for capturing the full complicated humanity of people caught in circumstances we can hardly imagine, and telling their stories with deep compassion that never descends to pathos or sentimentality.
They have brought the same gifts to Before It All Goes Dark, the story of an aging Chicago-area veteran’s quest to recover the priceless art collection that had been stolen by the Nazis from a great-great-uncle he had never known. Joining him on this odyssey, we witness his personal transformation as he discovers a new part of himself. It’s a testament to the transformative power of art. And it’s a reminder that we are never too old to learn, to change, and to discover the world and ourselves in different ways.
We are indebted to our production sponsors: the James and Sherry Raisbeck Foundation in Seattle, and Gordon Getty in San Francisco. We are grateful to Freddie Yudin for his generous sponsorship of mezzo-soprano Megan Marino. Our production of Before It All Goes Dark is supported by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Our heartfelt thanks to Chicago Opera Theater whose partnership has made our Chicago production possible.
Mina Miller founded Music of Remembrance in 1998 and continues to serve as its artistic director. Over this quarter century, she has guided the organization’s growth from the ground up into a mainstay of Seattle’s artistic community, with an expanding presence around the country and the world. Under her leadership, MOR has built an expansive repertoire of over 200 works, including over 45 new commissions. As a leading advocate for advocate for Holocaust-era composers and music, she has promoted a vision of how that mission can address issues of human rights in our own time. In addition to managing the organization, she joins many of its ensembles as a performer. Before launching Music of Remembrance, she had a distinguished career as a musical scholar, and as a pianist with solo recitals across North America and Europe.
It has been a thrilling and transformative journey to collaborate with Music of Remembrance over the past 17 years – to create stage works that give voice to unknown stories of the Holocaust, including For a Look or a Touch (2007), Another Sunrise (2012), Farewell, Auschwitz (2013) and Two Remain (2016). Artistic Director Mina Miller has been an inspirational guide for us, and we have grown tremendously thanks to her vision and leadership. So we were incredibly energized to explore and create a new work for MOR. The story we found is unlike any other we had heard.
Gerald “Mac” McDonald was a deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran who suffered from PTSD and Hep-C, among many devastating physical ailments. He grew up poor, angry and disenfranchised in the Chicago suburb of Lyons, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him. In 2001, thanks to Howard Reich at the Chicago Tribune, he discovered he was the sole living descendent of Emil Freund, a prominent Jewish businessman murdered by the Nazis in 1942. Mac was also the sole heir to Emil’s priceless art collection, which had languished for 60 years in a warehouse in Prague. All of this was a total surprise to Mac. In 2002, he borrowed and scraped to travel to Prague to uncover the secrets of his past and claim his inheritance, only to find the Czech Republic had declared the art collection a national treasure that would not be allowed to leave the country. A frustrating path, but an inspirational journey, because seeing Emil’s 30 paintings, learning of his life and death, walking in his path, Mac connected with an identity and story that touched and changed him profoundly.
Howard Reich reported this story in a series of articles titled “Mac’s Journey” in the Chicago Tribune in 2001 and 2002. He traveled with Mac to Prague and Łódź to chronicle the event.
Our one-act opera features Mac and another singer – a mezzo – who inhabits three roles: Sally (a neighbor), Misha (curator at the Jewish Museum in Prague), and Emil Freund. The arc of the piece takes us from Mac’s sparse, dark apartment to the astonishing world of color, identity and connection in Emil’s paintings at the Jewish Museum in Prague. The ensemble of seven instruments includes flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, bass and piano.
With a one-act opera, there’s always the question of what to program with it. Mina Miller had the brilliant idea of beginning the evening with a chamber music salon in Emil Freund’s lavish apartment on the still fashionable Manesova Street; a location Mac visited on his journey through Prague.
So to begin our evening, imagine you are in Emil’s stunning salon, surrounded by artworks from some of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. Just a few feet away, gifted instrumentalists perform new, exciting works that have just been composed by composers who would also ultimately perish in the camps. This is where our performance begins, with music that well might have been played in Emil Freund’s apartment.
Jake Heggie, Composer & Gene Scheer, Librettist
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Part I
Conversation with Howard Reich, Gene Scheer, and Jake Heggie
Part II
Prologue: Emil Freund’s Apartment in Prague, 1939
Musical salon with selections by composers David Beigelman, Robert Dauber, and Erwin Schulhoff
Part III
Music by Jake Heggie Libretto by Gene Scheer
Opera in One Act
Based on “Mac’s Journey” by Howard Reich a series published in the Chicago Tribune in 2001/2002 (used by permission)
World Premiere
Commissioned by Music of Remembrance
Made possible by a generous gift from the Clovis Foundation
Ryan McKinny, bass-baritone Mac
Megan Marino, mezzo-soprano
Sally/Misha/Emil
Music of Remembrance Ensemble
Demarre McGill, flute Laura DeLuca, clarinet Mikhail Shmidt, violin
Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola Eric Han, cello Jonathan Green, double bass
Jessica Choe, piano
Joseph Mechavich, conductor
Erich Parce, director
Peter Crompton, media designer
Jesse Parce, stage manager
Freddie Yudin, Megan Marino Artist Sponsor
Amanda C. Fox, Ryan McKinny Artist Sponsor
Jake Heggie is the American composer of ten full-length operas, including Dead Man Walking and Great Scott with librettos by Terrence McNally; Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, It’s a Wonderful Life, If I Were You, and Intelligence with librettos by Gene Scheer; and numerous one-acts. In addition to Heggie's chamber, choral and orchestral works, his nearly 300 art songs have been performed extensively on five continents, championed by some of the
the world’s most beloved artists. A bold new production of Dead Man Walking opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24season, while Intelligence, created with Jawole Zollar and Gene Scheer, received its world premiere on opening night of Houston Grand Opera’s season. Elsewhere, The Elements: Fire, Heggie’s new commission for violinist Joshua Bell, tours to New York, Seattle, Chicago, Hamburg, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. jakeheggie.com
Gene Scheer’s collaboration with Jake Heggie is a truly remarkable creative partnership Scheer has also crafted powerful works with other opera composers as well: Tobias Picker (An American Tragedy and Thérèse Raquin), Joby Talbot (Everest), and Jennifer Higdon (Cold Mountain). A composer in his own right, Scheer has written songs for Renée Fleming, Sylvia McNair, Stephanie Blythe, Jennifer Larmore, Denyce Graves, and Nathan Gunn. Documentary filmmakter llions
filmmaker Ken Burns featured Scheer’s song “American Anthem” in his Emmywinning documentary “The War,” and millions of people around the world heard President Biden share inspiring lines from that song in his inauguration address. genescheer.com
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After boarding the train in Prague, Gerald McDonald travels to Lodz, Poland, on the same route that the Nazis forced his great-great-uncle to take in 1941
Photo from the Chicago Tribune series Mac’s Journey Tribune photo by John Smierciak
Joseph Mechavich, conductor, has established a leading position on the modern music podium with breakthrough productions of contemporary operas such as Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, MobyDick, Great Scott, Out of Darkness: Two Remain and Three Decembers, and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, Cold Sassy Tree, Of Mice and Men and Wuthering Heights. He has also conducted much of the standard operatic canon in leading US opera houses. His 2023-24 season includes La bohème for Florida Grand Opera, La traviata for Knoxville O O L i di L for New Orleans Opera, La traviata for North Carolina e University of Maryland
Erich Parce, director, has brought his imaginative stagecraft to MOR productions for over two decades, including Hans Krása’s Brundibár, Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Hans Gál’s What a Life! and Tom Cipullo’s Josephine; and the world premieres of Tom Cipullo’s After Life and The Parting, Jake Heggie’s Out of Darkness and Nicolas Benavides’ Tres minutos. As an operatic baritone, Parce has performed with opera companies such as the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, L’Opera de Nice and L’Opéra de vocalist Montréal. He has been a frequent vocalist with MOR, performing several premieres.
pton is a gifted theatrical scenic designer who has 200 productions, including several world premieres, that from ballet to opera, musical theater, contemporary and a, and experimental works. With Music of Remembrance, visual designs have helped bring to life productions like e’s For a Look or a Touch and Another Sunrise, Tom sephine, Nicolas Benavides’ Tres minutos, and Sahba ormy Seas. Crompton has received many awards, and he ose sculpture installations have been shown in numerous he finds great satisfaction in sharing his love of theater
. by Opera News as “one of the finest singers of his American bass-baritone Ryan McKinny has earned his reputation as an artist with something to say. His relentless curiosity informs riveting character portrayals and beautifully crafted performances, reminding audiences of their shared humanity with characters on stage and screen. This season, McKinny brought his commanding bass-baritone and incisive characterization to opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season, starring opposite Jo
Joyce DiDonato and Susan Graham in Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking. He returned to Houston Grand Opera, where he trained as a Studio Artist, appearing as Amfortas in Parsifal and Leporello in Don Giovanni, and served as soloist in Belshazzar’s Feast under the baton of Marin Alsop at the Kennedy Center for the Arts. ryanmckinny.com
Megan Marino is a multi-faceted musical artist with interests spanning many genres. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, she studied piano and acting in regional theaters and has since performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and many others. She has been praised by Opera News as “a gifted actress with a strong, appealing voice, graced by a rich lower register,” and for singing trouser roles with “swagger” and “vocal audacity ” A dual citizen of the U S and Italy, Meagan joins MOR for the f
for the first time in these world premiere performances of Before It All Goes Dark. meganmarino.com
Jessica Choe, piano, has won numerous awards in the U.S. and abroad, and has performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Fondation Bemberg (Toulouse) and I Tatti (Florence). She was a recipient of the Presser Award in 2003, and in 2004 gave her Carnegie Hall debut under the auspices of La Gesse Foundation. An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with artists including Alexei Lubimov, Eric Jacobsen, Joseph Swensen and Philippe Quint. She is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School
Laura DeLuca, clarinet, has been a member of the Seattle Symphony since 1986. She has been part of MOR’s ensemble from the beginning and has been featured in many of its pathbreaking premieres. An advocate of new music, she was a cofounder in 1989 of the contemporary group Seattle Chamber Players. Her commitment to music that matters reaches beyond MOR. She was the solo clarinetist in the Academy Award winning documentaries The Long Way Home and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. In 2011, marking a day of historic political uprising in Egypt, she premiered Freedom, a concerto by Alissa Firsova, with the Northwest Sinfonietta.
Susan Gulkis Assadi, viola, began her orchestral career as Principal Viola of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and recently retired as Principal Violist of the Seattle Symphony after thirty-two seasons. A core member of Music of Remembrance, she has performed in nearly every concert since its inception. David Stock’s A Vanished World, MOR’s first commission, was written specifically for her. Gulkis Assadi has played with numerous chamber orchestras and coached and given master classes nationwide. She has spent the last twenty-six summers performing with the Grand Teton Music Festival.
Jonathan Green, double bass, joined the Seattle Symphony as Assistant Principal Bass in 1998, and retired at the end of the 2020-2021 season. Before moving to Seattle, he performed with the San Diego Symphony for eleven seasons, including three years as Principal Bass. Green has been a core member of the MOR ensemble for nearly its entire history and been featured as a soloist in works that include the world premiere of Shinji Eshima’s MOR-commissioned Veritas, about the consequences of religious intolerance of all kinds.
Eric Han, cello, a member of the Seattle Symphony, made his concerto debut with the Toronto Symphony at the age of 14. In collaboration with conductor Sir Andrew Davis, he recorded a live performance of the Elgar cello concerto on the Yamaha Canada label. An avid chamber musician, he has performed with many of world’s leading musicians, including Joseph Silverstein, Roberto Diaz, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Chee Yun and Lynn Harrell. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the Colburn School of Music and is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music These concerts mark his first appearance with MOR.
Demarre McGill, flute, has gained international recognition as a soloist, recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, he has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra; the Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Grant Park, San Diego and Baltimore symphony orchestras; and at age 15 the Chicago Symphony Now Principal Flute of the Seattle Symphony, he previously served as Principal Flute of the Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. He recently served as acting Principal Flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and earlier with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Mikhail Shmidt, violin, has been a member of the Seattle Symphony since 1990. Born in Moscow, he began his musical education at age five and won the Concertino Prague at age 14. He graduated cum laude from the Gnessin Institute of Music, and while a student there was a member of the Gnessin String Quartet. He also played in the State Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Radio String Quartet, and was concertmaster of Baroque orchestra Camerata Boccherini. A central member of MOR since its inception, Shmidt has performed in every concert except one over 26 years. He holds the Music of Remembrance James and Sherry Raisbeck Artist Chair.
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