GENE SCHEER  

Gene Scheer, librettist, has written two song cycles with Jake Heggie, Statuesque and Rise and Fall. Currently they are working on a chamber opera for the Houston Grand Opera and San Francisco Opera called Last Acts. In 2006, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performed the première of a lyric drama by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer titled To Hell and Back. Scheer also wrote the libretto for a children’s opera, The Star Gatherer, with composer Stephen Paulus, and worked as librettist with Tobias Picker on An American Tragedy, which had its première at the Metropolitan Opera. Their first collaboration, the opera Thérèse Raquin, had its première at the Dallas Opera in 2001. A recording of the opera is available on Chandos. In March 2006 a new production opened at Covent Garden. Norah Jones sings Scheer’s “American Anthem” in Ken Burns’s documentary The War.