If I Were You • Synopsis
If I Were You is based on a novel by Julien Green, who was born in Paris in 1900 to American parents. Green's work, written in French but heavily influenced by American authors such as Poe, Twain, Faulkner, Penn Warren, Welty, and Hawthorne, often deals with doppelgangers and the conflict between purity and passion.
Gene Scheer's libretto updates the setting to the present day. It is a Faustian/Jekyll & Hyde story with an element of magical realism which is new ground for Heggie and Scheer.
The story begins with the hero, Fabian, nearly dying in a car crash. The devil, in the guise of a beautiful, seductive woman, offers him the power to breathe his soul into another person so that he can live their life instead of his own. He can live forever this way, if he chooses, moving from body to body.
As the shy Fabian becomes a wealthy older man, a young handsome brute, and eventually a young woman, the opera will deal with issues of age, power, sexual politics, and gender identity that are both timeless and very much part of the contemporary zeitgeist.