Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick,” one of the most successful operas of recent vintage, composed by perhaps the most successful opera composer alive, finally arrived Saturday night at Los Angeles Opera. The work, first performed in 2010 and later seen on PBS, has been well received in its several stops along the way, and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was well-filled for this occasion.
Call me underwhelmed. Composed in a conservative idiom that wouldn’t challenge the ears of the average moviegoer, Heggie’s “Moby-Dick” seems designed foremost not to offend, and it doesn’t. But this “first, do no harm” approach results in an opera that feels too easy for its subject.
Not that a composer should send listeners running for the exits. Heggie, at his best, acknowledges the common listener and appeals to him. Why should opera be so difficult, he appears to ask, and why can’t there be tunes?
Heggie’s music is only part of the show, though. The set, costume, lighting and projection design nicely evoke the era and the sea. We get our men high in the rigging – singing arias and bellowing, “There she blows!” – and we get them tumbling into whaleboats (which here are outlines of light) going out on the hunt. But the bar for this type of visual dazzle is pretty high these days and the design certainly doesn’t exceed it.
I was surprised and ultimately disappointed that Captain Ahab was a tenor. The part was originally written for heldentenor Ben Heppner, and it is sung by Jay Hunter Morris (a noted Siegfried) here. The operatic ancestor would seem to be the title role in Britten’s “Peter Grimes.” But for this listener (and reader), Ahab connects more trenchantly with Wagner’s Wotan (he even wanders) and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov: He should be a bass.
Still, Heggie knows how to write for the voice in the sense that “Moby-Dick” has a very high quotient of understandable words coming out the singers’ mouths. One can ignore the supertitles for considerable stretches.
Heggie and his librettist Gene Scheer have boiled down the massive novel to three hours including intermission. Ishmael becomes Greenhorn for some reason, probably so that the novel’s first line can become the opera’s last. Ahab is the focus, and his words are more poetic and archaic than those of the others. All in all, the libretto works well enough, and there are no unintended laughs.
Britten’s “Grimes” and “Billy Budd” are obvious models for Heggie, though the imitation isn’t slavish. We get a lot of sea shanties in the mix, and juxtapositions of the major and minor third. The music is often syncopated in an easily propulsive sort of way. There are a couple of solid arias for Ahab, a pretty duet for Starbuck and Ahab. Queequeg is lovable in his broken English and curt phrases. Greenhorn is young and wide-eyed.
But it all feels a little too easy. A big part of that is the orchestration, very light and on the sparkling side, lacking in lower range oomph and percussive danger. A little more Wagnerian gloom definitely seemed in order.
Morris was properly imposing and tortured as Ahab, and clarion of voice. Morgan Smith provided an eloquent, melodious Starbuck. Musa Ngqungwana was an aptly blunt Queequeg and Joshua Guerrero an ardent Greenhorn. Jacqueline Echols, the only female in the cast, proved an able Pip, the cabin boy; Malcolm MacKenzie and Matthew O’Neill were the lively Stubb and Flask. The chorus of sailors was hale and hearty.
James Conlon led the orchestra with an emphasis on clarity, color and agility, some less than tidy passages notwithstanding.
Heggie, who certainly must have attended the premiere of his latest opera, “Great Scott,” in Dallas the night before, was on hand for the bows.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
