Artiste: Robert Orth

American composer Jake Heggie's early opera performed by Washington National Opera was one of those rare experiences of an opera full of raw power and wrenching emotion with superb performers that one is not likely to forget soon.

Opera Parallele's production of Terence Blanchard's Champion: An Opera in Jazz features great performances but an uneven score and spotty blocking.

After Life, a new opera by Tom Cipullo and David Mason that was commissioned by Seattle-based Music of Remembrance, imagines a posthumous confrontation between Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso and poses meaningful and moving questions about the power of art.