Houston Grand Opera Nominated for 2026 Grammy Award for Intelligence
- Details
- Category: Theatre, Music
- Published on Friday, 26 December 2025 10:54
- Written by A&E Contributing Editor
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) announces the company has received a GRAMMY Award nomination for Best Opera Recording for "Intelligence." The fall 2024 album, Massenet's Werther, was also recognized with Blanton Alspaugh's Producer of the Year, Classical category, nomination.
Created by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer in collaboration with director and choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. HGO's Intelligence recording and the company's fall 2024 album, Massenet's Werther, were also recognized with Blanton Alspaugh's GRAMMY Award nomination in the Producer of the Year, Classical category.
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Recorded during the opera's fall 2023 world premiere at the Wortham Theater Center and released in August 2025, critically praised album Intelligence captures a tour-de-force performance from an acclaimed cast and the HGO Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Kwamé Ryan. The recording is the first release from the new Houston Grand Opera label, created with London Symphony Orchestra's pioneering label LSO Live, as part of a distribution partnership announced in spring 2025.
"Jake Heggie's Intelligence is a work of extraordinary scope and emotional depth, with a sweeping, genre-blending score that masterfully captures the American spirit," says HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor. "This GRAMMY nomination celebrates not only the opera's artistic power, but also the extraordinary performance from our cast and the virtuosity of our HGO Orchestra, who together brought this brilliant piece to life. It feels especially meaningful that Intelligence—our first release with LSO Live—embodies exactly what this new partnership was built to do: share groundbreaking American masterpieces with audiences around the world."
"This nomination means the world to everyone who poured their hearts into Intelligence," says composer Jake Heggie. "HGO championed this story from the very first spark, and it is deeply moving to see our premiere cast and Kwamé Ryan honored this way. I hope the album continues to spark conversation about who gets remembered, and why."
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The Intelligence album showcases powerhouse performances from the opera's sensational cast, led by mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and soprano Janai Brugger as the Civil War-era story's pair of unlikely partner spies: Elizabeth Van Lew, from a prominent Confederate family, and Mary Jane Bowser, born into slavery in the Van Lew household. They are joined by mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges as Lucinda, baritone Michael Mayes as Travis Briggs, soprano Caitlin Lynch as Callie Van Lew, bass-baritone Nicholas Newton as Henry, and tenor Joshua Blue as Wilson. This world-premiere mounting was produced in collaboration with the acclaimed dance ensemble Urban Bush Women.
Reviews of HGO's Intelligence album have celebrated it as "a landmark independent of the world-premiere work it documents" that is "gripping throughout, musically taut, and lyrically inspired" (Gramophone), while lauding its "immediacy and depth with voices, both well caught and deftly balanced against the orchestra" (Limelight) and its "tidal wave of thunderous power," given "a full-throttle lift-off" from an "outstanding cast" (Financial Times).
"Infused with urgency, Heggie's music mirrors the emotional twists and turns of the action, playful at one moment and yearning at another," Textura wrote of the opera's recording. "Blues, folk, gospel, and jazz flavors blend seamlessly with classical as the splendidly orchestrated score draws on a panoply of moods and styles to illuminate Scheer's text."
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Today's GRAMMY nomination is the fourth in HGO history. In 1978, the company won in the Best Opera Recording category for the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and in 1989, it won Best Contemporary Composition for company-commissioned world premiere Nixon in China, composed by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. The company was also nominated for Scott Joplin's Treemonisha in 1977.
In addition to HGO's GRAMMY nomination for Intelligence, today the company also celebrates a 2026 nomination for Blanton Alspaugh for Producer of the Year, Classical for a body of work that includes Intelligence as well as another recording of a Houston Grand Opera production: Massenet's rarely performed masterpiece, Werther. The recording captures a star-studded performance of the 1892 French opera at the Wortham Theater Center, presented by HGO as part of its mainstage repertoire in winter 2023.
Recorded by Soundmirror and released by EuroArts, the company's Werther album features world-renowned Maestro Robert Spano conducting the HGO Orchestra, joined by an incredible cast that includes tenor Matthew Polenzani as the tortured poet Werther; mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as his beloved, Charlotte; soprano Jasmine Habersham as Charlotte's sister Sophie; and baritone Sean Michael Plumb as Charlotte's betrothed, Albert.
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Blanton previously received three GRAMMY Award nominations for Producer of the Year, Classical for portfolios of recordings that included three more HGO world-premiere productions: It's a Wonderful Life by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, in the 2018 Awards; The House without a Christmas Tree by Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek in 2019, which also won; and The Phoenix by Tarik O'Regan and John Caird in 2022.
HGO's Intelligence and Werther albums are available in both physical and digital formats, with streaming offered via HGO's partner platform, Apple Music Classical—Apple Music's dedicated app for classical music fans—as well as major platforms including Amazon Music and Spotify.
These recordings are part of the company's renewed focus on building and sharing its catalogue of recordings—both new and remastered—of major performances and company-commissioned additions to the repertoire.
Several more albums are already planned for release by the Houston Grand Opera label, including Daniel Catán and Marcela Fuentes-Berain's HGO-commissioned opera Florencia en el Amazonas, the first-ever recording of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's Breaking the Waves, and Javier Martínez and Leonard Foglia's HGO-commissioned mariachi opera El Milagro del Recuerdo.
HGO's commission of Intelligence was made possible by the support of Sara and Bill Morgan. The opera was recorded thanks to the generosity of Nabors Industries and Robert A. Ellis. The company was able to produce its recording of Werther thanks to the generosity of Mercedes T. Bass and Robin Angly & Miles Smith.
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About Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is one of the largest, most innovative, and most highly acclaimed opera companies in the United States. General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor assumed leadership of the organization and responsibility for its strategic vision in 2021. HGO is the only American finalist for Opera Company of the Year in the 2025 International Opera Awards, and the only American company to be nominated three times.
In fulfilling its mission to advance the operatic art, to serve the Houston community, and to be a global leader in the future of opera, HGO has led the field in commissioning and producing new works (76 world premieres to date) and in training and nurturing promising young artists and administrators. In 2025, the company launched the Houston Grand Opera record label, enabling it to share American operatic works with a broad international audience.
HGO contributes to the cultural enrichment of Houston and the nation through a diverse and innovative program of performances, community events, and education projects that reach the widest possible public. The company's pioneering Community and Learning initiative has served as a model for other arts organizations. HGO invites all Houstonians to experience superlative opera without the barrier of price through discounted single tickets and subscriptions, subsidized student performances, and free productions.
HGO has toured extensively and has won a Tony Award, two GRAMMY Awards, and three Emmy Awards. It is the only opera company to win all three honors.
