“Moby-Dick” Sets Sail at the Met Opera

Jane Bua
Bua writes astir classical euphony for Goings On.

Among the astir notable opening lines successful lit is undoubtedly that of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” For conscionable 3 words, “Call maine Ishmael” packs a lot: a name, a metaphor, a relationship offer, an order. But the opera “Moby-Dick” doesn’t statesman with that line; it earns it. In Jake Heggie’s score, the words look instrumentally arsenic an ebbing four-chord motif, but lone erstwhile the communicative has finished, erstwhile it’s acceptable to beryllium written down, are they uttered aloud. The character, who goes by Greenhorn successful the opera, is “the needle pulling the thread of the assemblage with him,” Gene Scheer, the librettist, told me. “We’re watching it hap successful existent time.”

Beginning March 3, you tin ticker it successful existent clip astatine the Metropolitan Opera, an accomplishment that has been years successful the making. The caller accumulation doesn’t stray excessively acold from its archetypal form—any kinks successful the libretto and euphony were worked retired agelong ago, astir erstwhile it archetypal premièred successful Dallas, successful 2010. The Met, being the Met, offers a much expansive canvas. Notably, it has height. The opera takes spot wholly connected the water, forgoing the archetypal sixteen land-bound chapters of its root text. Masts and ropes widen upward and are climbed by sailors, immoderate bodies adjacent ascending retired of frame. On this caller stage, the aforesaid altitude doesn’t eschew visibility. “The acceptable is benignant of similar a elephantine skateboard ramp,” the director, Lenny Foglia, told me. “We’ve ever had the height, but we’ve ne'er been capable to usage it fully.” The signifier itself besides stretches astir a ft retired this time. Heggie told me, “Lenny has extended it implicit the pit, truthful it volition beryllium close successful the audience’s look the full time.” If you get deed with sweat, it’s simply much immersion.

The Met’s mentation besides has updated technology—the opera uses nautical projections designed by Elaine McCarthy—and an expanded ensemble. “This volition beryllium by acold the largest presumption of the production,” Heggie told me. “It’s herculean.” The main vocalists—including the tenor Stephen Costello, who premièred the quality of Greenhorn backmost successful 2010; the tenor Brandon Jovanovich, arsenic Captain Ahab; and Ryan Speedo Green, arsenic the royal Polynesian harpooner Queequeg—and a robust chorus are bolstered, of course, by the Met’s orchestra. Will the celebrated whale proceed to elude the assemblage arsenic it has Ahab? “We whitethorn spot a small spot much of it this time,” Foglia hinted, coyly. If determination was ever a venue for it, it’s this one.

About Town

Indie Rock

As Father John Misty, the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Josh Tillman stages albums arsenic small psychodramas. Since his little stint with the set Fleet Foxes, Tillman has built retired existential conception records that span folk, big-band jazz, brushed rock, and indie pop, with a satirist’s oculus for the disturbingly absurd. His sophomore record, “I Love You, Honeybear,” which turned 10 this month, was a breathtaking and baroque deconstruction of self, but consequent releases person looked outward (and skyward), considering nihilism, celebrity, mortality, divinity, and their intersections. On his medium from past year, “Mahashmashana,” which takes its rubric from a Sanskrit connection for the cremation pit, helium riffs connected the thought of the spot wherever the beingness dies and is reborn, continuing a probing travel toward spiritual revelation.—Sheldon Pearce (Beacon Theatre; Feb. 26.)

Off Broadway

Hal (Elijah Jones), the young protagonist of Dakin Matthews’s “Henry IV”—an amalgamation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Part 2”—lives truthful dissolutely that his begetter (Matthews), the king of England, openly wishes his lad had been switched astatine commencement with the spitfire worker Hotspur (James Udom). Yet Hal’s shenanigans, pursued successful the institution of Sir John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders), that mediocre man’s bon vivant, disguise aspirations of greatness. Likewise, this accumulation meets the oculus humbly, nary much than a tiny signifier with 2 chairs. Then, mostly done the unit of its language—wisely foregrounded by the director, Eric Tucker, and vivified by a formed with respective standouts, including Udom and Sanders—it grows to encompass a murmuring woods, a raucous pub, and the rocky, sometimes treacherous terrain of idiosyncratic ambition.—Dan Stahl (Polonsky Shakespeare Center; done March 2.)

Art