Few American novels have become as integral to world literature or captured as many imaginations as Herman Melville’s sprawling masterpiece Moby-Dick, which was inspired by the real–life story of the whaleship Essex of Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was attacked and sank by a sperm whale on a Pacific voyage in 1820.
Working with noted librettist Gene Scheer, 49-year-old American composer Jake Heggie brings his operatic re–envisioning of this iconic work to the Dallas Opera for its world premiere on April 30, 2010. In all of its multi–layered and complex grappling with some of the core issues of an emerging American national identity as well as more universal philosophical questions, such an inspiration seems a natural match for Heggie.
The composer’s most celebrated work thus far is most assuredly the 2000 opera Dead Man Walking, written with librettist Terrence McNally. Called by London’s Guardian newspaper the opera that has made “the most concentrated impact of any piece of American music theater since West Side Story more than 40 years ago,” Dead Man Walking is based primarily on the book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean as well as the famed movie directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Like Moby–Dick, Dead Man Walking takes an unflinching look into some of the deepest and most unsettling corners of our collective psyche.
Astonishingly enough, Dead Man Walking was Heggie’s first full opera; since then, his work has included 2004’s The End of the Affair, 2005’s At the Statue of Venus, and 2006’s To Hell and Back, as well as the 2008 chamber opera Three Decembers. In a short time, many of today’s most top vocalists have become prominent champions of Heggie’s work, including mezzos Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, and Joyce DiDonato, not to mention Broadway legends like Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.
Starring in Moby-Dick as Captain Ahab is Ben Heppner, whose magnificent gifts as a heldentenor have served him especially well as a Wagnerian; undoubtedly, that dramatic force should serve him well in Melville’s classic tale. Conducted by Patrick Summers and staged by Leonard Goglia, Moby-Dick has a cast that also includes baritone Morgan Smith as Starbuck, tenor Stephen Costello as Greenhorn, bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu as Queequeg, soprano Talise Trevigne as Pip, tenor Matthew O’Neill as Flask and baritone Robert Orth as Stubb.
In a sign of the economic times, Moby–Dick is being mounted as a co–production between Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Calgary Opera. The opera’s world premiere in Dallas, comes barely three weeks after the announcement that Keith Cerny, the executive director and chief financial officer of San Francisco Opera from 2004 through 2007 and until April 2010 the CEO of Sheet Music Plus, will be the Dallas Opera’s new general director. He takes the helm from interim general director John Cody Jr., who served as interim general director for a year following George Steel’s resignation after four months in Texas to take the reins at New York City Opera.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
