Karen Almond
Actually, it’s such a quintessential instance it’s usually a part of its definition: “What’s narrative prosthesis?” “It’s like Ahab’s peg-leg in Moby-Dick.” If the white whale hadn’t gnawed off the captain’s limb, triggering his megalomania, there wouldn’t be a narrative. However there’s little reflection on incapacity past that.
The Met Opera actually leans into the “narrative prosthesis” of all of it in its new manufacturing of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick, which opened final Monday. One promotional video begins with a close-up shot of the whalebone peg-leg, which appears to be painted polystyrene. On opening evening, the cumbersome leg once more took heart stage, being hobbled upon by tenor Brandon Jovanovich, wild-eyed and clutching his cane.
If Heggie had a prosthesis upon which he leans, it might be tonality. Essentially the most impressed moments of Moby-Dick had been when, as if channeling Ahab’s insanity, Heggie tipped the rating additional into the deep finish. A pounding refrain of “Dying to Moby-Dick” on loop, like a caught document. Maybe some extra dissonant chords thrown into the combination like whaling spears. However Heggie at all times returned to a Disney-like sound that, particularly with the Planetarium projections (by Elaine J. McCarthy), had feeling like I used to be watching a film. Nonetheless, conductor Karen Kamensek managed to attract out the strain even in Heggie’s wave-like, Philip Glassian figures.
The strongest a part of Moby-Dick was the set designed by Robert Brill: A raked stage upon which refrain members did acrobatics. (Keturah Stickann dealt with motion, whereas Leonard Foglia offered total course.) The phallic ship’s mast, “just like the arm of a buddy,” proper within the heart. Masts grew to become stage curtains. Ropes and pulleys grew to become the innards of a large stringed instrument. These felt at odds with the outdated projections: Fireplace graphics that seemed reused from Grounded. Stormy seas that resembled a CGI Turner portray.
Scheer has managed to chop down Melville’s tome to 3 hours, which is about one eighth the unique. (Some New England cities have a 24-hour studying marathon.) The extra offensive components made the chopping block. Nonetheless, it was exhausting to look previous the informal racism of Queequeg (baritone Ryan Speedo Inexperienced) singing in damaged English. The libretto is stuffed with phrases and phrases like “piggin,” “loggerhead,” “put together to jibe,” and even “Nantucket sleigh trip.”
With an all-male forged apart from the pants function of Pip (soprano Janai Brugger), it was a whole lot of seamen onstage. This low tessitura was usually balanced by distinguished violin and flute. A spotlight was Stubb’s rum-drunk aria (baritone Malcolm MacKenzie) about “powerful, uncommon, and bloody” whale steaks, accompanied by off-kilter tambourine. Greenhorn’s aria (tenor Stephen Costello) was virtually acapella, joined at occasions by simply oboe and cello. Afterward, every pair — Queequeg and Greenhorn, Ahab and Starbuck — acquired their very own love, or relatively “male bonding,” duet.
Karen Almond
However unexpectantly stealing the present was baritone Thomas Glass, standing in for Peter Mattei on opening evening, as Starbuck. In a “Nessun Dorma”-like aria, during which Starbuck contemplates Ahab’s homicide, Glass’s feelings had been palpable. In the meantime, the captain cries out melodically in his sleep, leg mendacity lifeless beside him. When all of it involves a frothy climax within the second act, with “Thar she blows!” the animated whale herself was disappointing. It’s not till the final scene that Greenhorn sings the road everybody was ready for, atop silvery strings: “Name me Ishmael.”
In the long run, the most important downside with Heggie and Scheer’s Moby-Dick is, maybe, that the rating is simply too conventional, when there are various extra experimental Melville interpretations to show to; as an example, Laurie Anderson’s 1999 Songs and Tales from Moby Dick, or extra just lately to Andrew Yee and Caroline Shaw’s music for Wu Tsang’s arresting movie. Within the latter, notice Ahab’s whalebone excessive heel.
