Featured artists:
Music of Remembrance Ensemble, Joseph Mechavich
World-premiere recording of Jake Heggie’s (Musical America’s Composer of the Year 2025) new opera.
Before It All Goes Dark is based on reporting by legendary Chicago journalist Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune.
The opera tells the compelling true story of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, a gravely ill and deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran, which was first reported by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune. Mac grew up poor, angry, and disenfranchised in the suburbs of Chicago, his family’s Jewish ancestry hidden from him – until Reich tracked him down as part of an investigation inspired by his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust. When Mac learned that he was heir to a priceless art collection stolen by the Nazis, the two men embarked on a quest to Eastern Europe to uncover secrets of the past.
The opera is made up of two parts: the prologue and the actual opera. In the prologue we imagine an intimate soirée in Emil Freund's Musical Salon in Prague, 1939, featuring music by contemporary composers who, like Emil, would soon be swept up in the Holocaust. The works are an important memento of these artists and their work. What remains is the music and the memory.