90.5 WESA | By Bill O'Driscoll
PublishedApril 24, 2025 at 5:33 AM EDT
A woman named Mona has an unusual dilemma. Her son has stolen seven masterpieces from a major museum and hidden them in her house. Should she burn the paintings — two Picassos, a Matisse, a Gaugin, a Monet — to save her son from the law? In particular, what about the Lucian Freud painting that closely resembles Mona’s own late mother?
Andrew Bogard
That’s the setup for “Woman With Eyes Closed,” a new opera by Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer Jennifer Higdon that’s inspired by a true story and shares its title with the Freud painting.
The work, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, has a cast of five singers and a 12-piece instrumental ensemble. It gets its world premiere this week at Pittsburgh Opera, with performances Sat., April 26, through May 4.
“It does ask us about the value of art in our lives, what we share with each other and how important that is to us,” said Higdon. “And how does that affect our decision-making?”
Higdon, who is based in Philadelphia, began work on “Woman With Eyes Closed” a couple of years after the premiere of “Cold Mountain,” her operatic adaptation of Charles Frazier’s Civil War novel of the same name, which had 20 singing roles. That work was co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, whose executive director suggested Higdon next try “something really different,” Higdon said.
Gillian Rosen
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Pittsburgh Opera
Higdon recalled an article she’d read about a 2012 art heist at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal. The theft made global headlines, and the value of the seven stolen paintings was estimated at tens of millions of dollars. But with a focus on the woman, named Mona; her art-thief son, Thomas; a curator; a police inspector; and Mona’s mother, it seemed ideal for a more intimate production.
Higdon and librettist Jerre Dye completed writing “Woman” in 2018. Unusually, perhaps uniquely in opera, the score included three alternate endings, each to be used at different performances. (The ending constitutes just the final few minutes of stage time.) But its world premiere, scheduled for late 2020, was postponed by the pandemic, and Higdon said Opera Philadelphia was unable to mount the show.
Pittsburgh Opera stepped up, with a cast featuring contralto Meredith Arwady (for whom Higdon wrote the part) as Mona and mezzo-soprano Audrey Welsh as the curator. Fran Daniel Lauceria sings Thomas, with Lauryn Davis as Momma and Matthew Soibelman as the Inspector.
David Bachman
Higdon describes her score as accessible, albeit with elements of experimentation.
“It's very melodic, and there's a lot of rhythm. I always believe in making sure everyone can tap their foot to something,” she said.
The experimentation comes in with “extended technique” instructions for the musicians.
“Because it was about visual arts, I decided to push the instruments beyond the way they normally play,” Higdon said. “I wanted a bigger sound palette to represent the different paintings. The styles are very different between Monet and Lucian Freud.”
For instance, some passages feature a piano mute, which she describes as “an extra-large hiking sock that has 5,000 plastic BBs sewn in.”
“What it does is basically change the color of some of the strings,” she said. “It actually does really change colors a lot more than you normally would hear in an opera. But it matches the fact that this is about artwork and what art means to us just in a general sense.”
David Bachman
Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto, which premiered in 2009. Since 2010, she has won the Grammy three times for best contemporary classical composition, most recently in 2020 for her Harp Concerto. Her other Pittsburgh connections include a stint as composer-in-resident with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
“Woman With Eyes Closed” will be staged at Pittsburgh Opera’s Bitz Opera Factory, in the Strip District, its usual venue for such smaller-scale contemporary productions. The show proved popular enough in pre-sales that the Opera added a fifth performance to the original four. Nonetheless, all five had sold out by press time, albeit with a wait-list.
The first three performances will each have a different ending. The ending for the May 3 performance will be chosen by the preview audience. The May 4 ending will be selected by the cast.
