Moby-Dick at the Met: an opera worthy of Melville's totemic novel
Heggie and Scheer’s opera is an excellent musical romp, with some deeply moving moments along the way.
“Don’t call me Ishmael. Call me Greenhorn!” What? Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s 2010 opera Moby-Dick, based on Henry Melville’s same name epic 1851 novel was off to a topsy turvy start. Rename the narrator.
In the book some dub “the great American novel”, the iconic opening line, “Call me Ishmael”, is uttered by an innocent young lad, narrator of events which follow.
He’s a first-time whaler, one of the crew of the doomed Pequod, sailing out of Nantucket, skippered by an obsessed Captain Ahab, who stumps the deck on one natural leg, his other being a glistening white whalebone prosthetic.
Spoiler alert. The great white whale, Moby-Dick wins. In defiance of repeated choruses, “Death to Moby-Dick”. You know that. Everyone knows that eventually Ahab and his crew are consigned to the briny in a chaos of shattered spars and rigging.
But Melville had a plot construction dilemma. If the tale was to carry the reader along on a wave of impactful direct reportage, it had to be told from the perspective of an on-board observer.
He needed a survivor. Long time ago, Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, was rescued in the desert by an angel who provided water. Melville’s character was rescued from the sea by clinging to a floating coffin. So, the sole survivor, now with the benefit of hindsight, opens Melville’s book by dubbing himself “Ishmael”.
Different treatment needed in the opera version. Heggie and Scheer decided to miss out the first part of the book, the narrator’s experience in Nantucket before signing on to the Pequod’s crew. Act 1 of the opera opens after the Pequod has set sail, one week into its voyage. Introduced as a raw recruit to the crew, the not-yet-rescued Ishmael had to be called something else. “Greenhorn”. Neat work round
Scheer, an experienced librettist, must have had that fabled opening line rattling in his head as he crafted his precis of Melville’s sprawling plot. Nag! Nag! Nag! To be known as the librettist who had ignored the siren, “Call me Ishmael”. Ignominy. Get that line in somehow.
Thus, the opera closes with Greenhorn being hoisted on a hook by a passing ship from an empty sea. His rescuers inquire who they’ve plucked from doom. Scheer grabs the moment. “Call me Ishmael”, sings the crew member formerly known as Greenhorn The narrative circle is deftly closed. But it is kind of complicated.
A waggish academic lecturing on Moby-Dick once described the hallowed book as a 600-page novel where the whale finally makes an entrance on page 550 to a hearty, “Thar, she blows!”. A bit harsh, as in book and opera the whale and Ahab’s obsession with revenge – their previous encounter saw his leg bitten off – weave their way through the plot.
But the practical decision, shared by composer and librettist, to confine the onstage action to the voyage avoids a narrative sprawl. Wagner solved this sprawl problem in his worlds ranging Ring Cycle by writing a prequel, Rheingold. The chances of a Moby-Dick prequel, Nantucket, having audiences flocking would be slim. Cutting to the chase onboard the Pequod, literally, made sense.
This Met production directed by Leonard Foglia has been swimming the boards of American opera houses almost as long as Moby-Dick ranged the seven seas. Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington National at the Kennedy Center - now the domain of Moby-Trump. Other smaller, regional houses such as Utah, built smaller sets to suit their space.
It is a mystery why Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Met, who never usually looks a popular gift whale in the mouth, has not got round to presenting it before. An opera based on the great American novel cold-shouldered by the Met?
Maybe the sparse 75 per cent-filled house at the premiere explains Gelb’s caution. The whale would not pack them in. Saturday matinees are close to fully sold, but weeknights in the run are a sea of red dots. Moby-Dick can’t pull the regular crowd the Met needs.
Heggie and Scheer’s opera is an excellent musical romp, with some deeply moving moments and excellent character development along the way. Staging was spectacular, with dazzling projected graphics and visual effects from set designer Robert Brill and Lighting Designer Gavan Swift.
The audience was mostly held on the edge of their seats. Except for two diehard, traditionalist friends sitting along from me. One left at the interval, the other fell soundly asleep. If you just don’t get a contemporary composer like Heggie, and find his repetitious rhythms offensive, the solution is simple. Stay home. What the two do at John Adams and Philip Glass operas God alone knows. Hide in the rest room?
For those few readers unaware of the plot, lucidity beckons here. To see the most unconvincing Ahab of all time, Gregory Peck in a 1956 black and white film, remind yourself of how dire even some John Huston films could be, here she blows!
The tension in the opera is driven by the conflict between Captain Ahab’s unquenchable obsession to kill the whale, in his eyes the embodiment of evil, and First Mate Starbuck, keen not to be diverted from the main purpose of the voyage - to slaughter pods of whales, render them into valuable oil and head back to family and safe haven, Nantucket.
The confrontations are a constant, and unresolved. Starbuck never crosses the boundary of mutiny. Ahab, at one point with a musket drawn on Starbuck’s rebellious back, can’t find it in himself to squeeze the trigger. There is a later moment when the situation is reversed. Ahab is asleep on his chart table, Starbuck picks up the musket, sings a beautiful, contemplative aria about his family waiting at home, but… puts the musket down. Here is Heggie at his soaring melodious best.
Next in the wow factor stakes is an Act II duet when Ahab and Starbuck confront each other in the privacy of Ahab’s cabin and look into each other’s eyes, Ahab acknowledging he sees his family reflected back at him in Starbuck’s. A moment of beautiful melody and tranquillity, the turning point of the opera.
The obsession with the whale overwhelms Ahab’s sensibility. From here on in all hell breaks loose, storm at sea complete with St Elmo’s fire and then the sighting, and doomed chase of Moby-Dick.
A contrasting relationship, between two of the crew, Greenhorn and Queequeg, a Polynesian mystic harpooner, and prince in his own country, is touchingly developed. They develop a strong friendship. Queequeg sings of the power of the constellations, and they dream of sharing an island life together far from the perils of the whaling trade.
Queequeg has a premonition of imminent death – right on that one, but wrong reason, he thinks he’s ill – and instructs the ship’s carpenter to make his coffin. The coffin that would save his friend.
The special effects have well withstood the technological advances of fifteen years. Imagine a starry sky, where the points of constellations slowly join in lines and eventually form a ship, the Pequod, which rushes towards you as the music explodes, dominating the stage.
The rear stage had rising tiers of rungs. When the chase was on and longboats were “lowered away” a boiling sea was projected, the crew gathered in groups and were surrounded by the projected outline of the boats in hard white light. When the whale sank their boats, the light broke up and sailors tumbled from their rungs. One of the simplest yet most dramatic special effects I’ve seen.
Not only starry skies. A starry cast. American tenor Brandon Jovanovich debuted at the Met in 2010 as Don José in Carmen. Since, he has enjoyed an international career, including a stint at Peter Grimes at La Scala. Good off-Aldeburgh North Sea training for the Ahab role.
His domination of the Pequod’s crew by the skewering of a gold doubloon to the masthead, to be claimed by the lookout who first glimpsed the great white whale, was masterful. That he was the one who spotted Moby-Dick and got his own money back is incidental. Jovanovich pitched a difficult character perfectly.
Swedish baritone Peter Mattei delivered a thoughtful and authoritative Starbuck. Irresolution between his sense of duty to his captain and his understanding that Ahab is condemning them all to a watery grave is a high emotional wire to walk. Mattei pulled it off skilfully.
Ryan Speedo Green, an American bass baritone, is a Met regular and was a triumphant, tattooed Queequeg, singing alongside his pal Greenhorn, American tenor Stephen Costello. They delivered a touching double act, giving the audience a sense of “what might have been” save for Ahab’s obsession.
Karen Kamensek, a native of Chicago, ably led the in-form Met orchestra. The chorus, now under the direction of Tilman Michael who has taken over from the legendary Donald Palumbo, was wondrous, as usual. What more can be said?
In Moby-Dick the Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer collaboration has given audiences an opera worthy of the totemic Henry Melville novel. Compact, as true to the book as possible – Scheer painstakingly wove Melville’s poetic prose into his libretto - it is a remarkable achievement.
They were both there at curtain call to take their deserved bows. This is America’s Peter Grimes. That is no small compliment.