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What figures to be a score for sophisticated palates, including the famous wine tasting of 1976 California The selections surprisingly conquered the old ones French The vineyards will be featured in composer Jake Heggie’s opera “The Judgment of Paris.”
A rare comedy from Heggie, best known for turning Sister Helen Prejean’s “Dead Man Walking” and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” into operas, will premiere July 18 in a production announced Wednesday by California’s Festival Napa Valley.
Soprano Danielle De Niese plays Venus and baritone Quinn Kelsey plays Bacchus, mixing mythological gods with real-life people from the event. Paris‘Intercontinental Hotel. The cast includes tenor Nicholas Phan as Steven Spurrier, mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh as Patricia Gallagher, and soprano Brenda Rae as Odette Kahn.
Heggie said, ,I was looking for something that was fun, lighthearted, wacky and crazy while also being deeply meaningful and pushing boundaries., ,One After the winners were announced the judges were literally asking for her scorecards back. So we’re going to have a nice crazy scene for that judge with Brenda Rae doing coloratura soprano.
The judges at the wine tasting included Jean-Claude Vrinat of Telvant and Raymond Oliver of Le Grand Vefour. Chateau Montelena’s Chardonnay ranked first among whites, surpassing Meursault-Charmes Roulot in a comparison of the 1973 vintage. Among the reds, the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon was in first place, followed by the 1970 Château Mouton Rothschild.
George M. Taber wrote about the tasting for Time magazine and titled his 2005 book “Judgment of Paris”, referring to a story from Greek mythology describing the events of the Trojan War.
“It was such a scam,” Heggie said. “Some of those judges were accused by the French of being traitors.”
Napa Valley Festival CEO Rick Walker called Heggie in January, wanting to create a performance to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the 20th anniversary of the annual summer event.
“Undoubtedly, the result was revolutionary,” Walker said. “It was proof that you can make great wines in the New World, not just in California’s Napa Valley and in America but throughout the New World. It’s not a typical province of the Old World.”
Heggie’s operas usually take five to eight years to reach the stage. He began working with his librettist Jean Scheer, who wrote the text from May to October. Kent Nagano conducts and Jean-Romain Vesperini directs the approximately 60-minute one-act work.
Excerpts will be played at the French department store Printemps in New York on February 18 and a workshop at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in April, followed by more snippets in Los Angeles on May 26.
,Opera It has historically evolved from myth and legend and it feels natural to lean into that as a point of departure,” Scheer said. “When you’re doing comedy, when the stakes are high and the egos are high or grandiose, it’s easy to make fun of them and have fun with it.”
