The article reflects on the author's experience attending the Moby-Dick opera at the Met, revealing their ambivalence toward opera and their deep appreciation for Melville's novel. Despite excitement about seeing Ahab's dramatic story on stage, the author identifies a disconnect between the operatic adaptation and their expectations based on the source material. The performance, aimed at broadening audience engagement with the arts, invokes questions about the quality and authenticity of translating such rich literary themes into opera, suggesting a lack of resonance with the original text.
Moby-Dick, originally adapted for opera in 2010 by composer Jake Heggie, is an American creation that was neither deemed consequential or groundbreaking upon its publication.
The Met's objective over the last few years has been to get more common folk to engage with the arts, regardless of their familiarity with, say, ballet or the philharmonic.
Even if one's primary associative image of opera and classical music is Amadeus, the elements that make up the Moby-Dick opera would seem bastardized, crude.
Having recently spent the better part of a year reading the novel for the first time, I was enthusiastic about the source material's potential on such a grand stage.
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