Intimate Conversations: Brahms Sextet in B-flat Major and "Into the Fire" by Jake Heggie

About "Into The Fire"

The tragic story of the artist, Camille Claudel (1864-1943), locked up for 30 years in an asylum, has caught the imagination of many contemporary composers, writers, dramatists and film makers. She was an outstanding sculptor in an age where very few female artists were taken seriously. Her creative life was built around her relationship with Auguste Rodin, who was her teacher, mentor and lover. He first became her teacher when she was only nineteen and she resisted his advances for several years before commencing their stormy romance, blighted from the beginning by Rodin’s refusal to give up his long-term mistress, Rose Beuret. Camille was not even thirty when she moved out of Rodin’s studio and broke off all contact with him five years later. Living on her own she became increasingly depressed with self-destructive fits of ungovernable rage, gradually giving up on her work. On her father’s death in 1913, when Camille was not quite fifty, her brother Paul, horrified by the scandals Camille caused, had her committed to an asylum, where she remained until her death.

Camille Claudel; Into the Fire is imaginatively set on the day she is to be taken to the asylum. As dawn breaks, she sings to each of six of her most famous sculptures, giving voice to parts of her story. The Song Cycle was composed by Jake Heggie with text by Gene Sheer drawn from Camille’s letters and journals.