When Leonard Foglia was invited to direct an opera based on Herman Melville's masterpiece about a white whale, his first reaction was: "Moby-Dick. That's great!" "Then," he recalled, "I ran to a used bookstore and got the book. ... I thought: 'Oh my God, what am I in for here?' It's so daunting. I didn't panic, but I thought, 'How do we do this?'" How Foglia and his collaborators did it will be on display at New York City's Metropolitan Opera beginning Monday. The opera is composed by Jake Heggie, to a libretto crafted by Gene Scheer.
To begin with, Scheer had to whittle a novel of more than 600 pages down to a 64-page libretto. He kept as much of Melville's language as possible, estimating that 40% to 50% of his libretto can be found in the original text, though he often tweaked the phrasing to make it more singable. Heggie and his initial partner, Terrence McNally (who withdrew for health reasons), had already decided to lop off the opening chapters, which take place on land. They set the entire opera aboard the whale-hunting ship Pequod.
Another crucial change was renaming the narrator, calling him Greenhorn to reflect his status as a novice aboard the ship. Now, the book's famous opening line, "Call me Ishmael," is transposed to the very end of the opera, when the character has matured. Tenor Stephen Costello will perform that role for the fifth time and is the lone cast holdover from the Dallas premiere back in 2010.
story continues below
The opera, commissioned to celebrate the opening of a new opera house in Dallas, has been a success from the beginning, drawing praise from audiences and critics—even scholars. Bob Wallace, a professor at Northern Kentucky University and past president of the Melville Society, admired the opera so much that he wrote a book about its creation. "Scheer and Heggie did a brilliant job of shrinking the novel to make it fit the stage and yet preserve so much of the essence of it," he said in an interview. Karen Kamensek conducts the eight performances through March 29. More here. (More Moby Dick stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
