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A grand win for the creative team behind Intelligence Credit: Michael Bishop<\/p>\nHouston Grand Opera has won a Grammy Award for the Best Opera Recording, it was announced Sunday night. The winner, Intelligence, was the first Grammy nomination for HGO in more than 35 years and the third Grammy HGO has ever won.<\/p>\n
Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer created it in collaboration with director and choreographer\u202fJawole\u00a0Willa Jo Zollar after receiving a commission from HGO. It premiered in October 2023 and was latter made into the winning recording.<\/p>\n
The opera told the story of two women who became spies for the Union during the Civil War Southerner Elizabeth Van Lew (mezzo Jamie Barton) is a Northern sympathizer. She persuades her household slave Mary Jane (soprano Janai Brugger). to go to work in the house of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and pass on what she finds out from there. <\/p>\n
A grand win for the creative team behind Intelligence Credit: Michael Bishop<\/p>\n
This is the first opera HGO has recorded under its new HGO label that was created with London Symphony Orchestra\u2019s LSO Live label. Kwam\u00e9\u00a0Ryan conducted the orchestra.<\/p>\n
According to a press release from HGO: In 1978, the company won a Grammy in the Best Opera Recording category for the Gershwins\u2019\u202fPorgy and Bess, and in 1989, it won Best Contemporary Composition for the company-commissioned world premiere\u202fNixon in China, composed by John Adams with a libretto by\u202fAlice Goodman.\u202fThe company was also nominated for Scott Joplin\u2019s\u202fTreemonisha\u202fin 1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n
HGO General Director and CEO\u202fKhori Dastoor released this statement: \u201cThis Grammy win is an affirmation of what Houston Grand Opera stands for\u2014bold creativity, artistic excellence, and the power of American\u00a0opera.\u201d<\/p>\n