Jake Heggie: Before it all goes dark

Prior to the Nazi invasion of 1939, the successful Jewish Czech businessman Emil Freund spent years building a magnificent art collection of impressionist, modernist and abstract paintings. Here we imagine an intimate soirée in his Prague apartment featuring music by contemporary composers who, like Emil, would soon be swept up in the Holocaust.
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 impact of Before It All Goes Dark could hardly have been more potent. The story of Mac explores antisemitism on subtle levels. Thanks to Heggie’s evocative music, the wounds he suffers along the way resonate long after we leave the theater.” Quote from Musical America.