Four songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano. The songs were inspired by iconic objects in the Smithsonian with a particular connection to a former First Lady of the United States. Commissioned by Vocal Arts DC to celebrate its 25th Anniversary Season.

For baritone, men’s chorus and actor, “For A Look Or A Touch” is a story about the persecution of gay men during the Holocaust. The text is based on the true stories told in the documentary film Paragraph 175 and the journal of Manfred Lewin, from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

From Martin Bernheimer, The Financial Times: “The climactic finale involved the local premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (2011), an extensive ode to the agonised sculptor — Rodin’s lover — who died in 1943. Ever popular, obviously facile and increasingly daring, Heggie dealt sensitively with the introspective sentiments at hand. He juggled acerbic lyricism craftily with oppressive drama, adorning Gene Scheer’s text with florid wails and eerie melismas at jolting intervals. In the process, he made the primitive lamentations propulsive, the otherworldly illusions, delusions and allusions gripping. DiDonato sang the expansive solos with rare conviction and lustrous, subtly shaded tone. “