“One of opera’s superpowers is its ability to speak inner thoughts aloud… Scheer’s tight libretto fully embraces and explores that potential.” –Wall Street Journal

Gene Scheer is the celebrated librettist behind some of the most powerful new operas of our time. He’s best known for collaborations with Jake Heggie (Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, It’s a Wonderful Life, Intelligence), as well as works with Mason Bates, Jennifer Higdon, Joby Talbot, and Tobias Picker. In 2025, his libretti take center stage at the Metropolitan Opera – with the Met premiere of Moby-Dick in the spring, followed by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which opens the Met’s 2025/26 season in a new Bartlett Sher production conducted by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

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FESTIVAL NAPA VALLEY

The judgment of Paris

World Premiere
July 18, 2026

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Press Quotes

Moby-Dick

“This resourceful and beautiful work, as reconceived with imaginative fidelity by Heggie and Scheer, remains a highly personal and intimate drama. Its essential tenderness and humanity shine through.”

– San Francisco Chronicle

Moby-Dick

"Scheer has narrowed one of the canon’s most overflowing works to its core plot. For readers who enjoyed Moby-Dick but yawned through the rambling digressions about whaling, do I have an opera for you.”

– The New York Times

Before It All Goes Dark

“A striking fusion of intensity and emotional range, historical context and dramatic immediacy. An expansive story of layered themes that both captures and transcends its source material.”

– San Francisco Classical Voice

Before It All Goes Dark

“Librettist Gene Scheer turns Reich’s stories into a poetic journey of self-discovery for Mac that demonstrates the transformative power of art. Small in scale, but it packed an emotional punch.”

– Chicago Classical Review

It’s A Wonderful Life

“This just might be the opera we need right now. After a year of devastating fires, mass shootings, political turmoil and paralyzing uncertainty, It's A Wonderful Life couldn’t be more timely, or more heartfelt.”

– San Jose Mercury News

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

“Mr. Scheer’s tight libretto wastes no time on self- indulgence. The conclusion is neither a downer nor a conventional ‘his work lives on’ apotheosis, but the culmination of Jean-Do’s difficult journey toward acceptance and the joy in what he’s had.”

– Wall Street Journal

Everest

“This 70-minute juggernaut makes you feel disturbingly in the moment, living—and dying—along with the characters. Scheer’s taut, streamlined libretto expresses the complexities and joys of human resilience under the most terrible circumstances imaginable.”

– Wall Street Journal

August 4, 1964

"A complex tribute to a complex man with a deeply divided legacy. Mr. Scheer hit on a remarkable confluence of events… He created a tapestry of overlapping streams of consciousness, and Mr. Stucky responded with a varied, colorful and mercurial score.”

– The New York Times

How Do You Write an Opera Based on Moby-Dick?

“Moby-Dick already has everything an opera needs. But to adapt Herman Melville’s classic text—sometimes called the most famous novel no one has ever read—into a three-hour stage production was no small feat.”

– The Paris Review

Moby-Dick

“An undeniable success – greeted with a sustained, rousing ovation, with shredded programs fluttering down from the highest seating level. The strongest response was reserved for Mr. Heggie and Mr. Scheer, received at the end with a triumphal roar.”

— New York Times