Ben Heppner limped around theatre upon his brace leg, blood dripping from his face. The good white whale was in his Captain Ahab's sight.
The captain never kills a object of his harsh pursuit. Composer Jake Heggie, however, achieved his idea Friday night, with an achingly beautiful, distinctively sung as well as gorgeously staged universe premiere of his "Moby-Dick," a prominence of a Dallas Opera's initial season during a stimulating brand new Winspear Opera House. The audience responded with an eight-minute station ovation.
Just 49, Heggie has turn a single of a pre-eminent contemporary opera composers. His "Dead Man Walking," formed upon Sister Helen Prejean's book, premiered during a San Francisco Opera in 2000 as well as is among a most successful operas premiered since a genocide of Benjamin Britten in 1976.
"Moby-Dick," formed upon Herman Melville's 1851 novel, is an additional triumph, a nautical excursion that brings to mind Britten's "Billy Budd" (also formed upon a Melville work) as well as tools of a initial hour of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." The 90-minute opening act zips along, as well as a 65-minute closing act is ruminative as well as moving.
Heggie is a rarity, an permitted composer whose melodic lines as well as clarity of drama have been aimed during audiences rsther than than academics. With librettist Gene Scheer, who took over after Terrence McNally became sick with lung cancer, he has remade Melville's sprawling novel in to an active theatre work. They allot with a opening 100 or so pages set in New England, as well as a opera begins a week after a Pequod has set to sea.
Scheer simplified Melville's extensive language while gripping a communication of an mostly metaphorical narrative. There is an sea of shimmering sea music, a spraying wall of choral receptive to advice (prepared by Alexander Rom) as well as relocating arias for Ahab, Greenhorn (tenor Stephen Costello) as well as Starbuck (baritone Morgan Smith). The tattooed Poly! nesian h arpooner Queequeg (bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu) adds his own brand of outlandish song as well as lyrics as well as a only lady in a cast, soprano Talise Trevigne in a trousers role of Pip, injects liughtness as well as energy.
Heppner, of course, is a star. The song is written to fit his voice, largely avoiding sharply descending scales that during times have caused him worry in alternative roles. He sneers, puffs as well as pontificates, his tenor roving over waves of sound. Limping upon a brace leg that replaces a strength torn away in an earlier clash with a good whale, his Ahab is each bit tragic as Lohengrin, Tristan, Otello as well as Ghermann, a little of a roles that done him famous.
Leonard Foglia's pointy citation as well as huge nautical sets by Robert Brill were as most a star as a cast. Elaine McCarthy's projections, that deftly shifted angles, combined with Donald Holder's vivid lighting to show how record can support rsther than than detract. Jane Greenwood's costumes could outfit a genuine vessel. Choreographer Keturah Stickann as well as quarrel choreographer Bill Lengfelder combined a spacious night.
Patrick Summers, song director of a Houston Grand Opera, conducted with such discernment in to a ebbs as well as flows it seemed he had been study this measure for distant longer than it has existed.
There have been five more performances by May 16. 'Moby-Dick' is a co-commission with a State Opera of South Australia, where it is to open in September 2011, as well as 3 theaters where it is to crop up a following year: a Calgary Opera (winter 2012), San Diego Opera (February 2012) as well as San Francisco Opera (with Heppner as well as Summers in autumn 2012). These companies have themselves a whale of hit, a leaner but true reinterpretation of an American classic.
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