Moby-Dick • Opera San Jose
“When we last encountered Moby-Dick in operatic form, this magnum opus from composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer was embodied in the San Francisco Opera’s sweeping, majestic 2012 production. It was, among other things, a tour de force of stagecraft and visual design, which somehow managed to evoke the great watery vistas of Melville’s novel. So when Moby-Dick was announced as part of the current season by Opera San José one of the first questions was whether the magic of that epic reach could be replicated on a more modest scale. The answer was that it absolutely can — and in ways that reveal a lot about the greatness of this resourceful and beautiful work. Moby-Dick, as reconceived with imaginative fidelity by Heggie and Scheer, is still a mighty sea story, underpinned by a sense of the boredom and danger of the whale hunt. But at its heart, it remains a highly personal and intimate drama — about love and friendship, morality and duty, and the terrifying monomania of one man, the fierce Captain Ahab, possessed by demons not even he can understand. Whether the piece is made to inhabit theatrical spaces large or small, its essential tenderness and humanity shine through.”
