The opening line for Herman Melville's “Moby Dick” is one of the most famous in literature. But Jake Heggy and Jean Shea said the moody, monochromatic 2010 adaptation, which arrived at Metropolitan Opera on Monday, did not surprise those classic three words first.
It was an early declaration of independence, the kind that artists had to always make when singing famous novels, especially the vast, hairy novels like Melville. Composed by the well-traveled opera “Dead Man Walking” (2000) and the experienced scriptist Scheer, Heggie narrowed one of Canon's most overflowing works to the core plot.
For readers who enjoyed “Moby Dick” but yawned through a rambling digression about whaling, do I have an opera for you?
The compressed adaptation is at least directly and clear. Several modern operas that the Met has provided bursts over the past few seasons have leaned heavily towards disruptive devices. Complex flashbacks. A doubles character with shadows. A singer who plays a variety of qualities such as Destiny and Loneliness. Split screen style scenes traverse locations and times.
“Moby-Dick” doesn't want that. It will grow over a year or so, but it is a linear method. It never leaves the ship Pecod and its salty environment. The character is flesh and blood.
However, opera rarely assumes the urgency of flesh and blood. The story is streamlined and easy, but the ship's crew suffers from the demanding whims of a vindictiv captain, but Heggie and Sher want to capture Melville's gloomy grandeur, philosophical richness, and foresightful language.
Therefore, the general mood is dark and heavy blue. It's a rigorous, luxurious paced meditation directed straight at the audience. The goal was to create a work that was clear and vibrant, yet dreamy and meditative. In other words, along the lines of “Billie Budd,” along the opera of Benjamin Britten, and on the tragedy of another sailor, Melville, the ship becomes a typical Petri dish for the struggle.
This is where Heggie's “Moby Dick” adaptation ambitions go against his limitations as a composer. “Billie Budd” is fascinated by the unforgettable complexity of Britten's music, but this “Moby Dick” meditation feels a one note that appears to be shallow as a pool of tides.
Even the circumscribed world of opera includes storms, masts lit by the fire of St. Elmo, hints of the South Seas, night and day, tranquility, dancing, and vast expanses of the sky, but music is unable to meet the demands of these textures and colours. Heggie has no idea beyond swelling straight into minor key references to Philip Glass, John Adams and Britten himself. Although the works of all composers have an impact, these quotes are surprisingly unadorned if performed in spirit by the Met orchestra under conductor Karen Kamensek.
Heggie and Scheer have embraced the kinds of ensembles, duets, trios and quartets that allow this art form to present multiple perspectives at once, so enthusiasts of traditional operatic forms will find plenty to admire here. However, textual diversity is not consistent with score diversity, and conflicts that should stimulate the story are not necessarily important.
The true tension should be between or so with Captain Ahab, who pursues the obsession of Whale Moby Dick.
However, opera is distracted by a side plot about finding brotherhood among race and religion differences. Green Horn – The name of the opera gives the novel's narrator – first becomes terrified, then becomes friends with Polynesian harpner Kiekeg.
For the first time, I couldn't get your attention for nearly an hour and a half to the three-hour opera. In anti-minative aria, Starbuck contemplates whether to kill a sleeping Ahab to save himself and his sailors. Eventually, he can't do it and he slinks out as Ahab moans softly and the curtains fall off.
The sequence was riveted, but waited until the end of the first act. For other highlights, we have to wait again until the second half of the opera, until Ahab finally lets out the security guards at Starbuck and faces the costs of his single-minded mania. It's a gentle hunt before the final, and Heggie gives it with real kindness.
However, Ahab is given an equally outdated musical vibe, primarily by expressing himself through similar monologues of drearbone based on Melvilian dictionary, and by robustly rocking Handel-style coloratura. Tenor Brandon Jovanovic stals the stage with his belted peg legs, conveying Ahab's fatigue more than his strength.
The cast is completely male, except for the soprano who plays the young cabin boy Pip. Janai Bulger captures the purity of a boy's otherworldly. Baritone Thomas Glass is a solid Starbuck and acted with incredible confidence considering that he was announced to replace sick Peter Mattey just hours before Monday's opening.
Tenor Stephen Costello was a decent greenhorn, but bass baritone Ryan Speed green sounded like Queeque's lackluster. The burden of the sweet tone tenor William had a hole in his smaller role.
The set by Robert Brill, a handsome production by Leonard Foglia, Jane Greenwood's outfit, and lighting by Gavan Swift are dominated by masts and rigging. The deck is cleverly curved to allow cast members to climb and fall, and with the help of Elaine J. McCarthy's prediction, it appears to be lost in the ocean if the boat breaks in a whale hunt.
It is a clear staging of a clear work. However, the work lacks the ingenuity and depth to hold it in its source material. And it turns out that the opening salvo of Heggie and Scheer's independence was just an apocalypse until the moment the opera was closed.
When Pecod's only survivor, Greenhorn, is rescued by a passing ship, the captain asks for his name. Costel answers, singing a low and deplorable song: “Call me Ishmael.”
Moby Dick
It will continue at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan until March 29th. Metopera.org.
