Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, Heggie’s and Scheer’s latest collaboration, Intelligence, premiered at HGO in October 2023.Footnote 1 Just shy of two years later, HGO inaugurated the company’s new in-house label with its release of Intelligence on August 29, 2025. The bourgeoning Houston Grand Opera label partners with the London Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning LSO Live, and, as such, HGO is the first U.S. opera company to collaborate with the internationally established label. On November 7, 2025, the album was nominated for a Grammy Award, marking HGO’s fourth nomination in its history; and on February 1, 2026, Intelligence won the award for Best Opera Recording.Footnote 2
The most recent full-length opera in Heggie’s impressive oeuvre, which includes U.S. staples such as Dead Man Walking (2000) and Moby-Dick (2010), Intelligence promises a gripping tale of intrigue, desire, subterfuge, and loyalty delivered through a vividly cinematic score, evocative dance,Footnote 3 and flawless singing. According to Heggie and Scheer, the impetus for Intelligence came in 2015 at a concert event at the Smithsonian Institution: “A docent told us that he had the perfect story for our next opera and directed us to an op-ed in the New York Times: ‘A Black Spy in the Confederate White House,’” they explained. “We were floored. Both of us knew we had found our next opera.”Footnote 4 Their story, then, is based on real events and takes place in Richmond, Virginia, in 1865 during the U.S. Civil War. It centers around Mary Jane Bowser (fl. 1846–1867), a woman born enslaved to the prominent Van Lew family, and Elizabeth Van Lew (1818–1900), the wealthy daughter of the deceased patriarch. We quickly learn that Mary Jane and Elizabeth have been secretly aiding the Union army through an intricate web of smuggled intelligence. Elizabeth loans Mary Jane to the Confederate White House, where she—assumed illiterate by Jefferson Davis’s household—spies for the Union army and sends information through Elizabeth’s channels. Aside from the dangers imposed upon them through this plot, Mary Jane’s and Elizabeth’s plans are jeopardized by several competing story lines: Callie, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law, suspects Elizabeth of disloyalty and attempts to entrap her with the aid of Travis, a Confederate Home Guard; Henry, the Davis’s enslaved butler, falls in love with Mary Jane and tries to dissuade her from her husband, Wilson, who is transporting people and intelligence back and forth from the Union line; and several escaped Union prisoners are recaptured by the Confederate army and threaten to reveal Elizabeth’s spy ring. At the same time, the loyalty between Mary Jane and Elizabeth is not as simple as it seems. Mary Jane is (literally) haunted by her mother, Lucinda, whom she believed to have died giving birth to her. Questions about her past come to the fore just as her and Elizabeth’s operation becomes most vulnerable, threatening to collapse the precarious network from within.
The historical events on which this opera is based are as riveting as they are scant. Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth Van Lew’s life is fairly well-documented compared to the formerly enslaved Mary Bowser. Elizabeth was born in Richmond, Virginia, but was educated in the North. She held abolitionist views and, at the onset of the U.S. Civil War, formed a spy ring and helped Union prisoners escape. The most authoritative account is by Elizabeth R. Varon, professor of American history at the University of Virginia. Mary Jane Bowser was, in her report, the “most fabled—and most elusive—of Van Lew’s African American coworkers.”Footnote 5 She explains that although very little “hard evidence” remains to corroborate the stories, an article appeared in the Richmond Evening Leader in July 1900 (“as Van Lew lay dying”), which recounted the story of her spy, Mary Jane, inside the Confederate White House.Footnote 6 The remarkable and unlikely story of how Elizabeth and Mary Jane were crucial to the Union’s war effortsFootnote 7 has captured the imagination of the broader U.S. public. It has been re-interpreted in novels such as The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen (2012), Miss Lizzie’s War: The Double Life of Southern Belle Spy Elizabeth Van Lew by Rosemary Agonito (2012), and An Extraordinary Union: An Epic Love Story of the Civil War by Alyssa Cole (2022).
In their interpretation, Intelligence, Heggie and Scheer address the deep scar that slavery has left upon the United States—but not just in surface fact relegated to historical memory. They expose the existing trauma that white supremacy perpetuates and feeds upon. In doing so, the opera is at once both a lesson and a catharsis. Several numbers stand out as especially effective. The orchestra opens Act I, scene 1, with a churning undercurrent of turmoil and Mary Jane’s contemplative lullaby, “As I cross the ocean…whose arms are holding me there?” As she concludes with “Oh Lord, have mercy upon my soul,” the orchestra builds to an intensity that does not subside until the end of the opera. The Act II duet between Elizabeth and Callie is stunning. “Chained to You Forever” is nearly entirely a cappella. After almost an hour and a half of racing and dramatic urgency, the absolute stillness of this duet is piercing. By cutting out the orchestra entirely, Heggie captures a crucial moment of choice—the moment when Callie must make a fateful decision.
The final scene I will mention here is “The Slave Auction” in Act II. While trying not to divulge the twists and turns of this spy thriller, I will do my best to articulate the intensity of this scene. While the name itself recalls a terrible shared history, the scene reveals the trauma and hideousness that happens when people are dehumanized. It is so evocative in its horror and devastating in its consequences that it upends the entire opera. No longer is the audience much concerned with the comings and goings of intelligence. Elizabeth’s spy ring becomes something easy to navigate compared to the real terror inflicted upon thousands of families in the Land of the Free.
The live recording is wonderfully balanced and edited. Sounds from the stage and audience are barely perceptible while the singers are perfectly audible over the rich orchestra. Even dance numbers, such as the opening scene of Act I and the Ancestral Dance in Act II, are devoid of stomping feet and an echoing stage. Yet occasional sounds from the audience remind the listener that this is a live recording. Their interjections produce a somewhat uncanny feeling in the audio recording, which, for this listener, only adds to its mystical realism. From the downbeat to the final curtain, Heggie’s score paces like a spy thriller made even more urgent by its dark truths and emotional depths. HGO’s live recording features the premiere cast: Janai Brugger as Mary Jane, Jamie Barton as Elizabeth, J’Nai Bridges as Lucinda, Caitlin Lynch as Callie, Nicholas Newton as Henry, Michael Mayes as Travis, and Joshua Blue as Wilson.
Brugger’s Mary Jane is deeply complex, with strength and vulnerability in her rich voice. At moments assured, desperate, powerful, and broken, Brugger masterfully wields her voice to create this multidimensional character. Barton’s Elizabeth is confident and full, with touches of a Southern belle. Together, Brugger and Barton are a masterclass in vocal symbiosis. Lynch’s Callie is authoritative and powerful, but her moments of vulnerability reveal much about Callie’s fears and insecurities. Mayes’s Travis is cunning and shrewd, and he wields his voice masterfully. The nuance of his tone exposes the lies he tells and the traps he lays, especially in moments of dialogue with Elizabeth. Together, the entire cast delivers a nuanced, rich, and mesmeric performance.
Intelligence is a crowd-pleaser, a 007 thriller, but it is also dark and confrontational. Comparisons with Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess are sometimes suggested, but they are, in my opinion, mostly unwarranted.Footnote 8 Although both could be described as accessible to a wide variety of audiences, this score is decidedly cinematic—a staging is hardly necessary to grasp its meaning, let alone its plot: the orchestra paints the picture for you. At the same time, Intelligence is imbued with a thick strain of contemporary anxiety and a confrontational attitude that modern productions of Porgy seem to lack. In January and February 2026, Virginia Opera will launch a new production of Intelligence, the first in what will surely be many restagings.
Kathryn L. Caton teaches musicology at the University of Houston, Moores School of Music. Her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century opera, the long avant-garde, and experimental, collaborative, and participatory performance. Her first book, Participatory Opera: Power and Agency in Post-Wagnerian Performance, will be released by Routledge in April 2026.
