The winds of fate have billowed the large sails of the Pequod, the doomed whaling vessel of Melville’s classic work of fiction and now an impressive opera by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. Moby-Dick, commissioned by a consortium of five opera companies, including those in San Diego and San Francisco, premiered in 2010. Having been roundly praised (Heggie was also lauded for his Dead Man Walking), it made its Los Angeles and LA Opera debut Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Considering the length and density of the novel, it must not have been easy boiling down Moby Dick, keeping the gist of the story while ensuring that it remain compelling and comprehensible. Judging by the current production, the creators were largely successful.
If you were required to read the novel in high school or college, your instructor most likely emptied a bucket full of symbolism over your head: The white whale stands for this, the obsessed captain stands for that, and so on. And that’s somewhat true now as well, with the Pequod a world in miniature, with Queequeg (Musa Ngqungwana) and Pip (Jacqueline Echols), harpooner and cabin boy respectively, perhaps the spiritual center or centers of the ship, with first mate Starbuck (Morgan Smith) the voice of reason and Captain Ahab (Jay Hunter Morris) the man dead set on nailing the mighty leviathan who stole his leg, his pride, his dignity.
As for Ishmael, he’s here as Greenhorn (Joshua Guerrero), whose famous first line in the novel, “Call me Ishmael,” is relegated–and quite effectively–to the last line of the opera.
There have been several fine operas set on or near the sea, including Billy Budd and Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten, and The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner. In the most harrowing of these, storm waves seem to stack one upon another until the very clouds are drenched and dripping. And there’s nothing like tempestuous weather or trouble at sea to challenge or motivate a composer. This opera, too, is awash in luminescent blues and roiling clouds.
Pip is lost at sea when the whaleboat he’s in capsizes. Moby-Dick is buoyed by cinematic projections and lighting effects, and we see the boy suspended among the frothy swells and struggling to stay afloat. After a considerable amount of time Pip is rescued by Queequeg, but the lad seems feeble-minded afterwards, the near-drowning having claimed his sanity.
Early on, Ahab fires up his crew and has them chanting “Death to Moby-Dick!” He even promises a gold doubloon to the first sailer who spots the whale, but is so fixated on Moby-Dick that he seemingly forgets why they’re at sea in the first place.
At one point, an irritable Captain Ahab says, “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me,” and this statement brings to mind the Aguirre of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s epic film. While Kinski was operatic by default, that is, by his very nature, we should ask ourselves how Ahab should be portrayed and whether Morris becomes the character. I would imagine more of a restlessness while Ahab is awake and on deck. Nervous ticks and so forth. We do see him restless–while he’s asleep. But one drawback with opera is that emotions are almost exclusively conveyed through the voice. If we imagine Moby-Dick to have been a musical instead of an opera, like Titanic, there’d be much more movement and lifelike acting.
From this perspective, opera is often better suited for expressing quieter, heartfelt emotions–melancholy, sadness, or vulnerability, for instance. Just think of Madame Butterfly or La Bohème. Even the clown Pagliacci is at his best when he’s in tears.
It’s one reason why Queequeg and Greenhorn’s duet is memorable, when the latter, who is making his first sea voyage (hence the name), unexpectedly finds in Queequeg a soulmate and friend. It’s also why Starbuck’s Puccini-like lament, when he finds himself in a moral dilemma, is effective and affecting. And again, late in the opera, when Starbuck and Ahab appear to be seeing eye to eye about reaching home safely and seeing their loved ones once again.
However, too much of this (drawn-out quietude) and we lose the pacing and why we’re at sea on a whaling vessel with a madman at the wheel. We hit a patch of calm water (my euphemism) towards the end of Act I, after Pip has been pulled from the sea.
Because of what underlies the narrative, Moby-Dick needs to convey a sense of urgency and fatalism nearly every step of the way. At times, the urgency stalls. While we don’t need anything as strident as “The March to the Scaffold” from Symphonie Fantastique, we could use a little more agitation and chatter.
What do I mean? When the sailors clamber up the steep backdrop and into their “boats” (being projections of such), they are agile men with a purpose, and when they tumble out of their seats and into the sea they complement Heggie’s volatile score and the visuals that grab our attention. But let me note that these men are mostly climbers, acrobats, and maybe supernumeraries, but not the actual chorus. As for the chorus, there’s at least one occasion, after a fearsome storm has passed, where they are simply too inert. Opera is not cinema, I know that, even when it’s cinematic, but film’s influence should have pushed the old method of stand-and-deliver singing off the stage. The members of the chorus are too static. They’re a kind of deadweight if they’re standing still whereas they could be employed as forces of nature in their own right.
The dynamics of the piece are much, much better during Act II, beginning with the Rachel pulling up alongside the Pequod and Ahab exchanging words with the other ship’s Captain Gardiner (Nicholas Brownlee, whom we hear but never see). The dramatic pacing has kicked in, and the finale of the opera–which is aided immensely by the projection designer (Elaine J. McCarthy) and the lighting designer (Gavin Swift, but based on Donald Holder’s original design)–is both elegant and terrifyingly sublime.
Sheer has given Ahab many or most of his lines verbatim from Melville’s text, especially some of his memorable last words (spoken to Starbuck) which, at least as we find them in the novel, are: “Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”
Apart from Ahab’s belief that his date with destiny was in the cards from the time the world began, there’s also something a little demonic here, as if Ahab was not only obsessed but possessed.
And what’s the whale’s role in all this? That’s for each of us to decide.
As for Heggie’s well-crafted score, it’s shipshape throughout and not necessarily difficult, with certain themes or motifs (for the major characters, the ship, the sea) probably more evident on further listenings (San Francisco Opera’s production is available on DVD and BlueRay). James Conlon, conducting the LA Opera Orchestra, again brings out the best in his musicians.
This is a fine work, but could it have been a little more dynamic, a little more mad, a little more mesmerizing? I was occasionally but never fully engrossed. Not disappointed, but not swept out of my seat and into another world, which is of course what the best operas manage to achieve.
Moby-Dick is onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Performances are Saturday, Nov. 7, at 7:30; Sunday, Nov. 15, at 2; Thursday, Nov. 19, at 7:30; Sunday, Nov. 22, at 2; and Saturday, Nov. 28, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $17 to $290. Call (213) 972-8001 or go to laopera.org. ER
