If I Were You • Press Coverage
Critical Acclaim
“Bright and superbly evocative music … with arching melodies that settle into shimmeringly sunny harmonies. A work of inventiveness and expressive urgency… richly textured with a lush overlay atop brisk, tautly structured rhythms.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“A breakneck pace of dramatic intrigue and aural pleasure… a libretto of wickedness, wit and wisdom”
Opera Today
“As one might expect from composer Heggie (well known for Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, and It’s a Wonderful Life), the music is richly expressive and vocally demanding…passionate and earnest.”
San Francisco Classical Voice
“First and foremost are Heggie’s captivating music… Similar to Berlioz’s idée fixe, something between a theme or leitmotif (and yet neither), Heggie’s score opens with an elusive, beguiling passage in the orchestra that returns repeatedly during the work’s two-hour length, often in a variation. Different as If I Were You is from Heggie’s magnum opuses – Moby-Dick and Dead Man Walking – it is fully on par with them…”
Classical Voice North America
“Jake Heggie & Gene Scheer have become an indispensable presence in the contemporary opera world, and their latest premiere, If I Were You, found the duo at the very top of their game.”
Opera Today
“The opera, If I Were You, offered theatergoers all the tragedy and emotional impact promised by the genre, but with a modern twist… [It] provides an exciting new direction for both the future of opera in the city of San Francisco and the art form in the 21st century.”
The Daily Californian