Before It All Goes Dark • Press Coverage
Critical Acclaim
“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 and Heggie’s evocative music, 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. Seven instruments—flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano—are more than enough to evoke the terrors Mac and Misha confront. Slashing strings match Freund’s panic as bright search lights sweep across his apartment windows. Laura DeLuca’s sympathetic clarinet underscored Mac’s pain as he brooded over his bleak life. Mac’s journey is a solitary one, and Heggie’s highly colored but austere musical accompaniment feels especially appropriate.”
Musical America
“A one-act chamber opera, Before It All Goes Dark may be small in scale, but it packed an emotional punch. Scored for just two singers and seven instrumentalists, Heggie makes economical use of the limited forces. The score was trademark Heggie in its contemporary yet approachable style, inflected with elements of the blues and rock ’n roll.The Overture featured rhythmically driven music as Emil quickly packs a suitcase as he’s forced to leave his home. (‘What’s the last thing you reach for before it all goes dark?’ Mac later ponders.) This music cleverly turns into the heavy metal Mac blasts at home to calm himself. The agitated opening theme recurs during moments of peak emotional intensity, such as when Misha describes the harrowing train journey to the concentration camps Emil would have faced. A standout musical and dramatic moment came when Mac is shown Emil’s art collection in the basement of the museum. Looking at the artwork Emil lovingly and carefully selected, Mac wonders what it must be like to be chosen and loved—something missing from his childhood. The [opening] talk was followed by an imagined salon concert in Emil’s Prague apartment, featuring music by composers who would soon perish in the Holocaust. This device was an ingenious way to frame the production and get the listener into Emil’s sound world.”
Chicago Classical Review
“The evening delivered a rich experience. In a moment of eponymous foreshadowing, Mac seems poised at a fraught precipice — ‘the last thing you reach for, before it all goes dark.’ Heggie spins out the line in a long, poignant melisma that links Mac to his Jewish Uncle Emil, who collected the art before the Nazis took his paintings as well as his life. Heggie and Scheer have discovered an expansive story of layered themes that both captures and transcends its source material.”
San Francisco Classical Voice
“Heggie seemed to be inspired by the music of the era [featured in the opening salon], and similarly he interpolated many jazz elements in his scoring for the seven instruments, particularly in the jaggedly syncopated opening theme (Heggie’s operatic adaptation of Mac’s heavy metal music) that permeated the score from time to time, while retaining his distinguishable soaring vocal lines. One of the most astonishing moments was the instrumental played after Mac visited Freund’s house, where the music, coupled with the visuals of inside a train, chillingly demonstrated the horrors of being transported to camps! This was truly a tremendous achievement for Heggie, Scheer, Music of Remembrance and all the people involved. It not only teaches the dangers of letting history repeat itself, but also it demonstrates the transformative power of Art.”
Parterre Box
“‘Before It All Goes Dark’ has unquestionably captured something uniquely Chicago, yet universal in its emotional appeal.”
Buzz Center Stage
“Before It All Goes Dark is worthy of many more performances. Five 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. The [opening] salon morphed seamlessly into McDonald’s apartment for the beginning of the opera, accompanied by a small but effective ensemble. Heggie wrote a great riff-leitmotiv for McDonald, inspired, as he told me, by the imagined bass line of a heavy-metal band.The sound when Mac gets his first sight of Freund’s collection is suffused with Heggie’s version of a lament tune passed around the chamber orchestra.”
Aisle Seat Review
“Heggie’s music captures Mac’s despair when we first encounter him, and it develops slowly, like a smoldering fire that takes time to burst into flame. When Mac cries out to Emil, trying to understand the horrible course of his life, and grieving his death, it is a catharsis of immense power. The beauty of the opera is that Mac does not remain a tourist in his own new life. He embraces Emil as a tragic ancestor and has an awakening when he studies some of the paintings in a collection that had been described as priceless. He takes nothing physically tangible from this experience — no family art or artifacts — yet he returns home a much richer man.”
Hyde Park Herald
“Music of Remembrance staged the premiere of a bare-bones, brooding chamber opera by Heggie – 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. It was here that Heggie’s score flourished, undulating with waves of eloquently pungent harmonies and orchestral colour.”
Opera Magazine