Great Scott • Press Coverage
Critical Acclaim
“Great Scott takes expectations for what new opera can be to a brilliantly thrilling level … A huge success with a bright future.”
Theater Jones
“A magnificent and glorious creation from the overture until the sweetly understated ending, this is a modern opera that defies expectations. It’s truly a game-changer: an adrenaline injection of life-force into a classic form. It is, simply, one of the most engaging modern operas produced this century.”
Opera Warhorses
“Hilarious, endearing, sophisticated, profound. This is a major American work that will challenge and enchant audiences.”
Dallas Voice
“This deeply moving and musically brilliant work concerns Arden Scott, a world-famous opera singer whose talents and aura inspire audiences. One can say this is so but it requires a singer who can make it real. As portrayed by Joyce DiDonato, it was in every way true. Great Scott should enter the standard repertory just as Heggie’s two previous masterpieces – Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick – already have.”
Operavore
“Heggie, the composer of Great Scott, has plenty of experience: these days he receives more performances than any American but Philip Glass. Heggie’s strength is the naturalness of his vocal writing; singers who otherwise balk at new opera delight in his idiomatic feeling for the voice. Great Scott had a shiny first night in the Winspear Opera House…”
The New Yorker
“Do not miss Great Scott – generous and melodic, funny, touching, and endlessly entertaining… Heggie and McNally are reveling in operatic bliss, celebrating everything they (and all opera fans) love about the genre: the drama, the absurd plotlines, the divas, the virtuosity and, most indulgently, the voices. And oh, those voices! It will make you laugh, cry and fall in love with opera all over again. Or, if you’ve yet to experience your own personal operatic “ah-ha” moment, you might just find it in Great Scott.”
D Magazine
“‘Where is opera in the American DNA?’ It’s right here, with Great Scott, spot on: affectionate, wry, warm, facetious and deep in turn, multi-faceted and glorious in its musical variety and style. Prepare yourself for Joyce DiDonato as Arden Scott: she will simply knock your socks off.”
Critical Rant
“This is an exciting score, with an opera-within-an-opera written in a style that emulates 19th-century bel canto but is current and modern. Some of those bel canto characteristics are mirrored in the entire score. Arias and cabalettas within the bel canto opera rival those of the bel canto greats in flash and in beauty, and Heggie includes long, arching melodies reminiscent of bel canto melodies throughout the entire opera. There is even a terrifically confused, very quick-moving, Rossini-like Act I finale, with at least one real Rossini crescendo.”
Bachtrack
“Great Scott is both a love letter to opera and an S.O.S. for the art form… This work is thoughtful, funny and perhaps also a forecast of the opera of tomorrow.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
“Heggie’s music is always intricate and detailed, but in this work he outdoes himself by juxtaposing the modern musical syntax in the body of the piece with true bel canto style writing in the newly discovered 1800s opera championed by protagonist Arden Scott.”
Bachtrack
“Heggie obviously had a grand time toggling between modern and classical genres. The Italianate segments are beautifully lyrical…the arias are wonderful, and the comic set pieces are delightful — especially the playfully cutthroat one in which each performer participates in a wily alphabet game… A charming and whimsical new piece, with a good deal to say about the state of contemporary opera.”
Times of San Diego
“A modern opera full of humor and beauty. It is also relevant and poignant. The show works on every single level. Each character is given a moment to reveal their humanity to the audience. There were two elements of the show that were consistent — truth and beauty. Jake Heggie is a composer who stays true to himself. I feel as though he is always writing from the truth of his own story. It is our good fortune that beauty is an element of Heggie’s truth.”
San Diego Reader
“Heggie’s secret is his likability, which powers every aspect of “Great Scott.” He writes for the pleasure of his singers and for the pleasure of his audience. There isn’t a note that doesn’t seem to fit voices with ease.”
Los Angeles Times
“Heggie’s music is adroit and complicated, swinging back and forth between the opera we are watching and the 1835 opera within it, between the Sondheim-influenced present and the Rossini-dominated past. He has versatile skills and it’s great to see the man who gave us “Dead Man Walking” and “Moby-Dick,” have some fun. And enough with all this talk about opera’s constant battle against irrelevancy. This opera and its creators understand fully the power and vibrancy of today’s opera…”
Denver Post