About the work
It's a Wonderful Life is an opera by Jake Heggie to a libretto by Gene Scheer, based on Frank Capra's 1946 film and its literary source, Philip Van Doren Stern's story "The Greatest Gift". Jointly commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, the work received its world premiere in Houston on 2 December 2016.
Plot
Bank clerk George Bailey faces financial ruin on Christmas Eve and considers ending his life. The guardian angel Clara is sent to him and, through flashbacks to his life in the small town of Bedford Falls, shows him the difference he has made to the people around him.
Cultural significance
Critics praised Heggie's gift for vocal melody, with which he turned an American Christmas film classic into one of the rare successful opera adaptations of that genre.