Before It All Goes Dark
Composer
Jake Heggie
Premiere
Music of Remembrance • 2024
Commissioned by
Music of Remembrance
The opera tells the compelling true story of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, a gravely ill and deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran, which was first reported by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune. Mac grew up poor, angry, and disenfranchised in the suburbs of Chicago, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him – until Reich tracked him down as part of an investigation inspired by his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust. When Mac learned that he was heir to a priceless art collection stolen by the Nazis, the two men embarked on a quest to Eastern Europe to uncover secrets of the past.
Musical America
“Before It All Goes Dark is a one-act piece, but the impact could hardly have been more potent. The story of Mac explores antisemitism on subtle levels. Mac finds redemption of sorts at the end. But thanks to Scheer’s tightly focused libretto, the wounds he suffers along the way resonate long after we leave the theater. The opera’s impact stems from the intimate simplicity of Heggie’s music and Scheer’s straightforward prose.”
Photos by Terry Lorant (Music of Remembrance at Presidio Theatre)
Previous Performances
Music of Remembrance at Benaroya Hall, 2024
Music of Remembrance at Presidio Theatre, 2024
Chicago Opera Theater & Music of Remembrance, 2024
Critical ACCLAIM
— Chicago Classical Review
Chicago Opera Theater • 2024
“A one-act chamber opera, Before It All Goes Dark may be small in scale, but it packed an emotional punch. Librettist Gene Scheer turns Reich’s stories into a poetic journey of self-discovery for Mac that demonstrates the transformative power of art.”
— San Francisco Classical Voice
Music of Remembrance • 2024
“The evening delivered a rich experience. Scheer’s libretto marries Mac’s unvarnished vernacular (‘That painting is cool’) to lyrical meditations on the power of art to ‘make the invisible visible.’ The evening delivered a rich experience. Engaging as Before It All Goes Dark was as a chamber opera, the potential for a full-length treatment is there. Heggie and Scheer have discovered an expansive story of layered themes that both captures and transcends its source material.”
— Opera Magazine
Music of Remembrance • 2024
“A bare-bones, brooding chamber opera by Heggie and Scheer – a new work that proved to be a satisfying evening of music theatre. Before It All Goes Dark created a simple, sincere narrative that had a direct emotional effect due to its being sparingly scored and staged. Once Mac confronts the art and grapples with its expressive power, the story and music achieve an extraordinarily quiet and sweetly unsettling climax.”
— Parterre Box
Music of Remembrance • 2024
“Scheer’s libretto was truly a great asset in this one-act opera with five interconnected scenes. The tender tone and the economy of words – just in a couple short sentences – really opened the eyes of not just Mac but also the audience to the idea of belonging, and it strongly marked the turning point of the opera. This was truly a tremendous achievement for Heggie, Scheer, Music of Remembrance, and all the people involved. The opera not only teaches the dangers of letting history repeating itself, but also it demonstrates the transformative power of art…”
— Buzz Center Stage
Chicago Opera Theater • 2024
“‘Before It All Goes Dark’ has unquestionably captured something uniquely Chicago, yet universal in its emotional appeal.”
— Aisle Seat Review
Chicago Opera Theater • 2024
“Before It All Goes Dark is worthy of many more performances. These brilliant collaborators have created a structure that allows for a compelling theme—art deprivation as the result of the Holocaust—to resonate to the maximum.”
— Hyde Park Herald
Chicago Opera Theater • 2024
“A powerful opera exploring identity and art… Librettist Gene Scheer has paired down Mac’s story from Reich’s two-part Tribune series. He mostly employs clear, plain language, rather than a more poetic turn, and this brings out the rough-edged Mac effectively. The beauty of the opera is that Mac does not remain a tourist in his own new life. This is a remarkable work and a memorable one. It was a fitting way for Chicago Opera Theater to mark the end of its 50th season.”
Feature Coverage
“Jake Heggie can never predict where he will find the topic for his next opera. But the American composer has an instinct for recognizing when he has alighted on a story that will send his imagination into overdrive. Such as when he heard about a Vietnam War veteran who discovered he was heir to an art collection looted by Nazis. ‘I felt the hair going up on the back of my neck, because I knew this was the right one,’ Heggie said in a recent interview about Before It All Goes Dark, his latest collaboration with librettist Gene Scheer.”
“Heggie and his frequent collaborator, the librettist Gene Scheer, set to work adapting Mac’s true story to the demands of the heightened-drama art form of opera. Reich declares himself impressed with Scheer’s ability to capture Mac in the libretto, including through direct quotes from the Tribune stories. Not only have they adapted the story and remained true to its spirit, but in large part true to the letter as well. ‘They’ve accentuated the drama without diluting the truth,’ Reich says.”
“Heggie and Scheer — strong contenders for the most celebrated composer–librettist team working today — first worked with Music of Remembrance on the 2007 opera For a Look or a Touch about two gay Jewish teenagers whose youthful courtship was disrupted, fatally, by the Nazi regime. Four other operas and song cycles followed. Miller reached out to Heggie and Scheer about another commission timed to the organization’s 25th anniversary. Heggie was still searching for a subject in early 2021, when Reich announced his retirement from the Tribune. Heggie invited him to dinner later that year and mentioned the Music of Remembrance commission. While Reich relayed the saga behind Mac’s Journey, Heggie says ‘I got this rush — I felt music. It was a different perspective on the Holocaust from anything we’d considered.”
— Opera Now
We all have a connection to the Holocaust
“A story of Nazi looted art paves the way for a new opera about discovering Jewish identity and the power of journalism. 'In my senior year I realised that being locked up in a practice room, practicing piano repertoire for 8 hours a day was not my idea of something to do. So I thought, you know what? I should write about music.’ Howard Reich had two passions co-existing in his early life - spending years at college trying to reconcile whether to hone the craft of piano performance or pursue art journalism. It’s a dichotomy that I understand well.”
“Imagine being the sole heir to a multimillion-dollar art collection that was stolen by the Nazis in World War II. Then imagine being an often angry, almost broke, and terminally ill Vietnam War veteran living alone in a small suburb southwest of Chicago. Now imagine that you’re both of those simultaneously, and you’re on your way to Europe attempting to recover the art treasures. The statistical likelihood is practically zero — but not absolute zero, as Gerald ‘Mac’ McDonald discovered. His astonishing story is the subject of Before It All Goes Dark, a new chamber opera by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer.”