Classic’s new take
In HGO’s staging, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is more about redemption than sentimentality.
The people responsible for turning “It’s a Wonderful Life” into a full-scale opera don’t like the word “sentimental.”
It’s an incomplete word, they say, one that tries to describe how a story can be so tender and nostalgic that it rings false. But that fails to capture the timeless magic — and darkness — of Frank Capra’s beloved 1945 film.
“At the core of this is a man who is thinking about committing suicide and leaving behind a family. He doesn’t recognize his place in his society as valuable,” composer Jake Heggie says. “I don’t think it’s light at all. There’s dance, there’s romance and beauty, but underlying is a dark current of danger.”
When Houston Grand Opera premieres its operatic rendition of the classic holiday tale this Friday, he says, people will have uplift and redemption in their minds, not sentimentality.
Known for operas “Dead Man Walking” and “Moby-Dick,” Heggie is the first person to tell you how dark, though ultimately inspiring, “It’s a Wonderful Life” can be.
That’s because when Heggie was 10, his father, who suffered from depression, committed suicide. He left behind four children. After that, Heggie dove into music. It allowed him to connect to a larger world at a time when he felt most alone.
“Being chased around by all those voices in my head, the safest and most empowering place I found was music,” he says. “It was my lifeline, all throughout my life. I might have been lonely, but I never felt alone in music.”
So when he got together with librettist Gene Scheer, a close friend and collaborator, to make an opera from Capra’s film, Heggie wrote about what was emotionally true to him.
“That’s the reference point I had in my life,” he says.
Scheer agrees, “If you go to the wellspring of the story, it’s one of great meaning and emotional punch.”
In other words, the story behind HGO’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” is one of two friends collaborating on a story of deep personal significance and engaging in an art form that saved Heggie’s life after his father’s suicide. So much for sentimentality. And it connects with Heggie in more ways than one. The music of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s was the soundtrack to his childhood because his father, who played the saxophonist, loved big band music and would play in it the house. That same music will play on Dec. 2, when troops of angels take to the skies, showered in light and singing about the life and struggle of George Bailey.
Directed by Leonard Foglia, the opera features a female angel named Clara played by Talise Trevigne. Rather than presenting the downtrodden George Bailey’s (William Burden) life through cinematic flashbacks, Clara journeys through the man’s life from past to present in an effort to find out what brought him to the bridge.
“Her job is to talk him off the ledge,” Foglia says.
“My goal is when the curtain goes up, people instantly know they’re not in the movie,” the director says. “Hopefully, we can transport them to another place. The story’s going to be told in a different way.”
The emotions in “It’s a Wonderful Life” are perfect for opera, Heggie says. The production can use the story without being beholden to the film and bring out its themes of personal redemption — and the importance of community — in ways the movie never did.
“This is not a news story. This is timeless. It’s essentially operatic to me,” he says. “I would never think of it as sentimental. It goes from great sorrow to joy, with an immense sense of redemption when someone finds the meaning, beauty and truth in their life. That’s huge.”