United States Jake Heggie, Moby-Dick: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera / Karen Kamensek (conductor). Metropolitan Opera, New York, 3.3.2025. (ES-S)
The Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Moby-Dick marks a significant milestone for Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s 2010 adaptation of Melville’s novel, a work that has steadily gained a place in the contemporary operatic repertoire. First staged at the Dallas Opera on 30 April 2010, Moby-Dick was a bold undertaking: a streamlined, dramatically taut retelling of the fateful voyage of the Pequod, balancing Herman Melville’s grand themes of obsession and fate with the immediacy of theatrical storytelling. Over the years, the opera has traveled widely – from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Adelaide and Calgary – but its arrival at the Met signifies a new level of institutional recognition. This staging offers a fresh opportunity to assess how the opera, shaped by the influences of Britten and Wagner yet unmistakably modern in its musical language, holds its own in one of the world’s most prestigious houses.
From the outset, adapting Moby-Dick for the operatic stage posed formidable challenges. Melville’s novel is sprawling and structurally unconventional, weaving together philosophical musings, encyclopedic digressions on whaling and a deeply psychological study of obsession. The absence of a traditional dramatic arc, the lack of sustained interpersonal conflict and the dominance of an introspective narrator – all elements that resist straightforward theatrical treatment – make it a daunting source for adaptation. Gene Scheer, the opera’s librettist, addressed these pitfalls by focusing the narrative on essential relationships and moments of high tension. He condensed Melville’s vast world into a taut, two-act structure that shifts the novel’s perspective from Ishmael’s contemplative recollections to the immediate, stage-worthy dynamics among four men: Ahab, Starbuck, Greenhorn (the opera’s equivalent of Ishmael) and Queequeg.
At the heart of the opera is Captain Ahab, a figure of immense willpower whose monomania bends the Pequod and its crew toward destruction. Scheer preserves Ahab’s grandeur and tragic intensity, portraying him as a man who sees fate as something not merely to be endured but to be confronted and, if possible, mastered. In Melville’s vision, Ahab is both victim and agent of his own destiny, unable to accept the possibility of an indifferent universe. Like Prometheus defying the gods or Oedipus unraveling a truth that seals his doom, Ahab cannot abide a world in which power is beyond human control, and this hubris makes him one of literature’s most compelling tragic figures. In the opera, his arias and confrontations with Starbuck continue to serve, as in the novel, as powerful expressions of his determination to confront the unknown forces of existence no matter the cost – for himself and others.
Starbuck, Ahab’s first mate, provides the strongest counterbalance to his captain’s destructive zeal. A devout and pragmatic man, Starbuck sees the hunt for Moby Dick as not only madness but blasphemy, a direct challenge to divine will. His clashes with Ahab, set in starkly contrasting musical lines, heighten the opera’s dramatic tension, illustrating the struggle between reason and obsession. Greenhorn, the opera’s equivalent of Ishmael, undergoes a transformation from an uncertain outsider to a haunted survivor, serving as the audience’s conduit into the story, as in the novel. Meanwhile, Queequeg, reimagined with a more active dramatic role, embodies courage and loyalty, his presence lending the opera a spiritual depth absent from the novel’s more cerebral focus. In Moby-Dick, Queequeg and Ishmael form an immediate and profound bond, their unlikely friendship transcending cultural barriers. The opera preserves this relationship but heightens its dramatic weight, making Queequeg, whose acceptance of fate contrasts with Ahab’s defiance, a stronger guiding force for Greenhorn.
The libretto preserves Melville’s heightened, poetic language where possible but strips away the novel’s more discursive passages, replacing them with direct, dramatically charged exchanges. By foregrounding action over exposition and framing the story as a relentless march toward doom, Scheer and Heggie transformed Moby-Dick into a gripping theatrical experience without losing sight of the novel’s thematic weight. In doing so, the opera retains the essence of Melville’s vision: a meditation on fate, freewill and the terrifying power of human obsession. This sense of inescapable fate, of a man forging his own doom with every step forward, makes Moby-Dick not only an epic novel but a natural fit for operatic tragedy.
Leonard Foglia’s original staging, with sets by Robert Brill, projections by Elaine J. McCarthy and costumes by Jane Greenwood, conjures the vast, merciless expanse of the sea, with Captain Ahab’s ship in its center, with striking theatricality. A curved wall doubles as the Pequod’s hull and the shifting, boundless ocean, allowing sailors to climb, teeter and vanish into the depths. Digital projections transform the stage into a night sky teeming with constellations, a roiling storm or churning waves, heightening the opera’s sense of awe and fatalism. Though some sequences – mates clambering up and tugging at ropes, sailors plunging from boats drawn on the walls – repeat with near-ritualistic insistence and at times risk losing their impact, they ultimately reinforce the relentlessness of Ahab’s pursuit, turning the staging into a hypnotic reflection of obsession.
Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick is a score of striking immediacy, built on lyrical accessibility and cinematic pacing. He favors sweeping melodic lines and clear harmonic language, steering away from the ambiguity that characterizes Britten’s Billy Budd and Peter Grimes, two operas that explore the sea as both a tangible setting and a psychological force. In Heggie’s approach, the ocean is evoked through orchestral surges and ostinato-driven rhythms – at times recalling the propulsive textures of Philip Glass – but serves more as a backdrop than an active presence. Throughout the evening, under Karen Kamensek’s assured baton, the orchestra shaped the score into a vivid, immersive soundscape, balancing rhythmic urgency with lyrical breadth.
The opera’s rhythmic propulsion sustains tension and drives the narrative forward with clarity, yet this same momentum also aligns Moby-Dick with the aesthetics of musical theater where pacing and accessibility are paramount. At times, its relentless forward motion smooths over the libretto’s darker undercurrents. Nowhere is this clearer than in Ahab’s death scene, where the music erupts into a percussive Latin drive – an energetic burst that feels at odds with the moment’s tragic weight. Rather than reinforcing inevitability, the music injects theatricality, making the captain’s disappearance feel more staged than fated.
The premiere’s undeniable success was bolstered by a strong cast, with Brandon Jovanovich delivering a commanding portrayal of Ahab, his tenor capturing the captain’s obsessive fervor and unrelenting authority. His robust voice shifted effortlessly between raw, heavy-handed intensity and fleeting moments of vulnerability, most notably in his Act II duet with Thomas Glass’s Starbuck, where Ahab briefly considers renouncing his manic pursuit.
The biggest surprise of the night was Glass, a young baritone stepping in at the last minute for an indisposed Peter Mattei. He delivered a confident and vocally polished performance, his supple yet commanding baritone bringing warmth to Starbuck’s moments of doubt and moral reckoning. His Act I aria, in which he wrestles with the idea of killing Ahab, stood out as one of the performance’s highlights, his voice darkening as the character’s internal struggle deepened.
Stephen Costello and Ryan Speedo Green made a compelling duo as Greenhorn and Queequeg. Costello’s bright, supple tenor captured Greenhorn’s innocence and yearning, though his voice only gained full emotional intensity in later scenes, particularly in his grief-stricken outbursts after Queequeg’s death. Green’s warm, sonorous bass-baritone lent Queequeg quiet dignity, though his role often felt limited to ritualistic moments rather than fully integrated into the drama.
Janai Brugger brought vocal brilliance and theatrical flair to the trouser role of Pip, the young cabin boy. As the only female voice in the cast, her soprano provided a striking contrast, lending Pip a luminous, almost ethereal quality in an Ariel-like interpretation that balanced a mercurial spirit with vulnerability.
In other smaller roles, tenor William Burden (as Flask, the third mate) and baritone Malcolm McKenzie (the easy-going second mate Stubb) added depth to Pequod’s deck cast of characters.
As one of the multiple contemporary operas recently staged at the Met, Moby-Dick stands among the most memorable – an opera that gives Melville’s story a striking new life on the stage.
Edward Sava-Segal
Production:
Libretto – Gene Scheer
Production – Leonard Foglia
Sets – Robert Brill
Costumes – Jane Greenwood
Lighting – Gavan Swift
Projections – Elaine J. McCarthy
Cast:
Queequeg – Ryan Speedo Green
Greenhorn – Stephen Costello
Flask – William Burden
Starbuck – Thomas Glass
Stubb – Malcolm MacKenzie
Pip – Janai Brugger
Captain Ahab – Brandon Jovanovich
Nantucket Sailor – Remy Martin
Tashtego – Steven Myles
Daggoo – Jarrod Lee
Spanish Sailor – Jonathan Scott
Gardiner – Brian Major