With its ever growing arts district, the City of Dallas continues to think big. The same can be said for the Dallas Opera and its new Winspear Opera House. For the second half of its first season in the new house, the company commissioned and premiered Jack Heggie’s “Moby-Dick.” I attended the performance on Saturday May 8.
The massive scale and varied themes of Melville’s classic novel have flummoxed many who’ve tried their hands at creative adaptations. But Gene Schere’s libretto telescopes the drama to a handful of characters and the opera is a pretty good show, thanks especially to the work of director Leonard Foglia and scenic designer Robert Brill.
Most memorable are the projections which feature stars, maps and compasses, various views of ships large and small, plus lots and lots of water. We never see the whale. Ropes and metal scaffolding often fill the proscenium and a few too many arias and duets are delivered from precarious heights above the stage as the singers grab tight to the ironwork, holding on for their lives. The back wall slopes downward into the main playing area like a giant slide. When ships crash, supernumeraries spill down it as if splashing into the water.
For much of the first act, which runs almost two hours, Heggie’s score surges like the sea with constant rhythmic life. The music is always pleasant and tuneful and has some imaginative orchestral touches, such as the sound of whale’s spout created by a trumpet blown without a mouthpiece. The second act begins with a lively sea chanty. But over all the opera floates on a shallow ocean. There’s never much undercurrent to the orchestral writing nor much counterpoint to be found, even in the vocal parts despite plenty of ensemble numbers.
Star tenor Ben Hepner in the lead role of Captain Ahab deserves credit just for managing that peg leg. He’s a hulking authoritative presence with a knitted brow, but certainly not any kind of menacing embodiment of evil. One wonders if he’d command so much stage attention if he wasn’t spotlighted all the time. Musically the role has lots of melismatic lines, which Hepner sings with a rather unvaried mezzo-forte dynamic, until one hushed and arresting duet. That comes midway through the second act with baritone Morgan Smith, who has an attractive emotional and dynamic range and is the best of the supporting cast.
The other characters, always in Ahab’s orbit, are officers and sailors and one cabin boy played with style by the sole female in the cast, soprano Talise Travigne. The cast also includes bass Jonathan Lemalu as Queequeg, a quasi-shamanic figure, and tenor Stephen Costello as the introspective and troubled Greenhorn. They all get a little stir crazy and seemingly every aria and scene ends with religious exhortation. The all-male environment, combined with the regular references to Christian values, makes the Pequod feel like a monastery on the water.
The large orchestra was conducted by Patrick Summer and played with surety and ease. The acoustics of the 2,200-seat Winspear Opera House are proving to be a curious, however. From a seat near the rear of the orchestral level, the sound of the instrumental ensemble seemed capped and distance. Snatching seats on the fifth row after intermission solved that problem. But most of the theatrical tricks in “Moby Dick” came in the first half and a few too many introspective arias made the second act slow and disappointing, even if Ahab did finally spot that big white whale.
