ENOUGH: Voices Against Abuse

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“Heggie’s ‘To Hell and Back’ is an incredible musical journey…a bold experiment …the results are magnificent.  Heggie, who is best-known for his full-length opera “Dead Man Walking”, has given the orchestra a decidedly contemporary 40-minute score, one with echoes of Britten, Barber, Bernstein and Copland. The musical language was current, while the sound world is baroque…the effect akin to seeing a favorite painter suddenly switch from oils to watercolors — the same vision with a whole new palette.  Heggie’s subject is…spousal abuse, and he and librettist Gene Scheer have borrowed elements of the Persephone myth to set the contemporary tale in motion.  “To Hell and Back” will come as a surprise to those who think modern opera isn’t sufficiently tuneful. Heggie has given the score some of his most arresting orchestral writing — a turbulent overture, a lovely melody for the happy times the women (the opera centers on Anne and her daughter-in-law Stephanie, who is abused by Anne’s son) have spent gardening, a lithe motif for a blanket that is Stephanie’s symbol of hope. And, as always, Heggie writes beautifully for the voice. “  East Bay Times