Outside of Zellerbach Hall, the oak trees lining Strawberry Creek sway in a gentle late-summer breeze. But the dazzling weather outside can't compete with the glow suffusing Zellerbach's rehearsal room, where Frederica von Stade and Jake Heggie take turns describing how their lives and careers have intertwined inextricably over the past 25 years. More than a mutual admiration society, the beloved mezzo-soprano and the sublimely gifted composer who catapulted to fame in 2000 with the opera Dead Man Walking, have formed an extraordinary creative alliance, a musical love affair marked by a series of revelatory songs and roles.

"The voice is an imperfect instrument," says von Stade, 63, the long-time Bay Area resident affectionately known as "Flicka" to friends and acquaintances. "Sometimes those reeds come together, sometimes not. Fatigue, babies, age—all those things affect the voice. And Jake loves it. He's able to decipher musically what are the strong points and what are the weak points of all the voices he works with. I think that's pretty amazing. It takes a passion for singing."

A breathtaking array of singers has responded to Heggie's passion for the human voice and championed his work, including Susan Graham, Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, Isabel Bayrakdarian, and Zheng Cao. As a pianist, Heggie has accompanied an equally glittering roster: Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, Paul Groves, Thomas Hampson, and many others. But in the beginning there was von Stade. Heggie first heard her perform in Los Angeles in the early 1980s when he was an aspiring composer studying at UCLA. Though they didn't actually work together for more than a decade, her sound became the beacon guiding the lyricism that has made Heggie's songs among the most performed in the contemporary vocal canon.

"What I responded to is the immediacy and the connectedness of Flicka's voice," says Heggie, 47. "There's never anything false or phony or put on. It's genuine. There's this beautiful quality of sound that penetrates through your heart and soul and speaks truth. There's an honest connection to every single phrase and word.... And like everyone who's a fan, I'm just drawn into her world of expression and truth and honesty and self-deprecation; laughter and tragedy.

Their latest collaboration, the chamber opera Three Decembers, will make its West Coast debut on December 11–14 at Zellerbach Hall and draws on von Stade's entire emotional range. Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Cal Performances, the piece premiered last February in Houston under the name Last Acts. The family drama features von Stade as Broadway diva Madeline Mitchell, and Keith Phares and Kristin Clayton as her son and daughter, Charlie and Bea. Three Decembers grew out of the brief Terrence McNally play Some Christmas Letters, which was performed only once, for an AIDS benefit in New York, and starred Julie Harris in the role of the mother.

Heggie had spent years in search of a perfect role for von Stade when he prevailed upon McNally, the librettist on Dead Man Walking, for a copy of Some Christmas Letters. Deeply moved by the play, he passed it on to von Stade, who immediately agreed to participate in the project. Gene Scheer wrote the libretto, the latest piece in his recent burst of collaboration with Heggie that includes the song cycles "Statuesque," "Rise and Fall," and "Friendly Persuasions," and the opera To Hell and Back.

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