HEGGIE DOES IT AGAIN: One of the operas playing this year’s Fort Worth Opera Festival is Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers. Heggie is the composer of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick – each of which have played in these parts in the past few years. With Three Decembers, he takes the chamber opera approach in telling the story of a veteran Broadway actress struggling in her relationship with her kids after their father has died. Olin Chism writes that the production, “is close enough to soap opera to present some challenges to a producing company, but the Fort Worth Opera’s effective new production meets those challenges well,” in his dfw.com review. Scott Cantrell was also pleased. “Both Janice Hall as Madeline and Emily Pulley as Bea have voices that often turn edgy. But, with penetrating direction by Candace Evans, they and Matthew Worth, as a clear-toned Charlie, bring their characters vividly to life,” he writes on dallasnews.com. And count Wayne Lee Gay among the show’s fans. “Typical of Heggie’s music, the score (for an orchestra of 11 musicians, stationed behind the sets in this production) is immediately engaging and constantly energetic; Heggie fears neither dissonance nor lyricism, and the frequent pungency in his writing gives way to a sheer beauty,” he writes on Front Row. The next performance of Three Decembers is Friday.

MUSIC BITS: Fort Worth Weekly reviews new locals discs from Pinkish Black, Fontanelle and The Breakfast Machine. (fwweekly.com) … Summer concert season is upon us, and DC9 at Night picks out the can’t miss festivals. (DC9 at Night)

PICTURES OF YOU: This morning, the Dallas Museum of Art is holding its press preview of “Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas,” which opens on Sunday. The show commemorates the 60th anniversary of the painter’s “Impressions of Dallas” show, which was held at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in Fair Park in October 1952. The new DMA show will feature 20 works from that series. Over on the museum’s Uncrated blog, they’ve posted a few cool archival photos from Grosz’s initial visit.