THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN OPERA IS HERE
I shudder when the time comes to see a “New American Opera.” The majority of new works are frustratingly inaccessible. Instead of reinventing opera, most composers stick with the same non-melodic minimalist recitative while librettists get more wrapped up in poeticism (such as repeating phrases for unfathomable reasons) than storytelling. While orchestrations become more and more fascinating, the confounding and exacting new style of vocal lines—which sound like someone just hurled notes onto the staff willy-nilly—may please the grant-generating and avant-garde crowd, but it leaves me uninspired and hopeless.
But when I saw Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick at San Francisco Opera, it was as if I had been rewarded for panning and sieving through mounds of dirty river water for years: This opera is a boulder of gold. Moreover, the work’s dramaturge and director Leonard Foglia, an American theater director whom I have admired for years, assembled a design team that matched the authors’ new perspective on Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.
Now, LA Opera brings this eye-popping production to the Chandler this week for six performances only from Oct. 31 through Nov. 28, 2015. Tenor Jay Hunter Morris reprises his role of Captain Ahab, the fierce, obsessive whaling-boat captain who descends into madness and puts his crew in mortal danger. When General Director Plácido Domingo wrote that this is one of the most exciting operas of our time, a true modern masterpiece, and an astonishing stage production, he may have been understating the leviathan magnificence of this enterprise. This production is as unsinkable as its title cetacean.
photos by Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
Moby-Dick
LA Opera
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 North Grand Ave
Saturday, October 31, 2015, at 7:30
Saturday, November 7, 2015, at 7:30
Sunday, November 15, 2015, at 2
Thursday, November 19, 2015, at 7:30
Sunday, November 22, 2015, at 2
Saturday, November 28, 2015, at 7:30
for tickets, call 213.972.8001 or visit LA Opera
