Talk about planets in alignment. In September 2023, the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with the house premiere of Jake Heggie’s first opera Dead Man Walking, the most frequently produced new title of the last 20 years. And in October, with Dead Man Walking still alive and kicking at Lincoln Center, Heggie’s Intelligence—his 10th opera—opened the Houston Grand Opera season as the company’s 75th world premiere. Set in Richmond, Virginia, in the final days of the Civil War, Intelligence centers on Elizabeth Van Lew (Jamie Barton), the wily abolitionist daughter of an enslaver, and Mary Jane Bowser (Janai Brugger), who was born into slavery in the Van Lew household but has been given her freedom. Who would suspect that these unlikely intimates are passing secrets from the Confederate White House into the hands of the Union? What are the ties that bind them? Elizabeth and Mary Jane are historical figures, but much of their history is lost. From scant surviving facts, Heggie, his frequent librettist Gene Scheer, and the director-choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (founder of the Urban Bush Women, whose dancers appeared in the show) have fashioned nail-biting melodrama powerfully infused with magical realism. Audio alone can’t convey the supernatural element, but with an assist from the listener’s imagination, the excellent live recording casts a disquieting spell. —Matthew Gurewitsch