Latest news with #JakeHeggie
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Watch Five Highlights From the Met Opera Season
There were some great shows at the Metropolitan Opera this season. I went three times to a vividly grim new production of Strauss's 'Salome' and to a revival of his sprawling 'Die Frau Ohne Schatten,' and I would have happily returned to either one. But overall the season, which ends on Saturday with a final performance of John Adams's 'Antony and Cleopatra,' had considerably more misses than hits. Lately, the company has given more resources to contemporary work. That's an admirable endeavor — and a risky one, both financially and creatively. This season the Met presented four recent operas, none of them box office home runs or truly satisfying artistically. 'Antony and Cleopatra' had passages of Adams's enigmatic melancholy, but the piece slogged under reams of dense Shakespearean verse. 'Grounded,' by Jeanine Tesori and George Brant, which opened the season in September, starred a potent Emily D'Angelo as a drone operator, but couldn't rise above a thin score. Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang's 'Ainadamar,' its music raucously eclectic, struggled to make its dreamlike account of Federico García Lorca's death into compelling drama. Best of the bunch was 'Moby-Dick,' by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, a bit bland musically but at least clear and convincingly moody. The tenor Brandon Jovanovich's world-weary Ahab, stalking the stage with a belted-on peg leg, has stayed with me. So too has the pairing of a volatile Julia Bullock and Gerald Finley, the embodiment of weathered authority, as Adams's Cleopatra and Antony. Among other strong performances, Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz, the two leads in a revival of a scruffy staging of Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte,' sang with melting poise. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Moby-Dick' and ‘Fidelio' Review: Opera Adrift at the Met
New York If 'operatic' is a synonym for 'big,' Herman Melville's sprawling novel 'Moby-Dick' should be ideal source material for the stage. Jake Heggie's 2010 operatic treatment certainly took up a lot of aural and visual space at its Metropolitan Opera premiere on Monday, but there was an emptiness at its heart.
Washington Post
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
At the Met, a visually stunning ‘Moby-Dick' surfaces but never goes deep
NEW YORK — On Monday, the Metropolitan Opera presented the company premiere of Jake Heggie's 'Moby-Dick' — the composer's 2010 operatic adaptation of Herman Melville's landmark 1851 novel. And to get your first question out of the way: Alas and no, this whale watch has no whale. We see only Moby's massive eye. (And he appears to see us.)
