{"id":1773,"date":"2025-03-15T16:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T16:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/observer-opera-reviews-moby-dick-and-beethovens-fidelio\/"},"modified":"2025-03-15T16:20:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T16:20:22","slug":"observer-opera-reviews-moby-dick-and-beethovens-fidelio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/observer-opera-reviews-moby-dick-and-beethovens-fidelio\/","title":{"rendered":"Observer Opera Reviews: \u2018Moby-Dick\u2019 and Beethoven\u2019s \u2018Fidelio\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stephen Costello and Ryan Speedo Green. Karen Almond\/Met Opera<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After its annual winter hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera reopened with a pair of productions that chronicle their protagonists\u2019 dangerous, intensely personal quests. The journey in Moby-Dick, <\/i>Jake Heggie<\/a> and Gene Scheer<\/a>\u2019s adaptation of Herman Melville<\/a>\u2019s epic novel in its Met premiere, ends in death and destruction, while the latest revival of Beethoven\u2019s Fidelio <\/i>concludes with the victory of good over evil. If neither production could be deemed a triumph, both proved to be bright spots in what has been, so far, a pretty lackluster Met season.<\/p>\n

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Condensing Melville\u2019s vast and discursive work into a three-hour opera may have seemed as foolish as Captain Ahab\u2019s increasingly desperate voyage to find the whale that maimed him, but Heggie and Scheer\u2019s Moby-Dick <\/i>has been met with success since its 2010 premiere at the Dallas Opera, though it has not proved as popular as Heggie\u2019s Dead Man Walking <\/i>which played at the Met last season<\/a>. Since Dallas, Leonard Foglia<\/a>\u2019s dynamically effective production has since traveled to Canada and Australia as well as other U.S. cities. It has now arrived, expanded for the Met\u2019s huge stage, teeming with life aboard the Pequod ship as it sails to its final doomed encounter with its target.<\/p>\n

Robert Brill<\/a>\u2019s evocative set, replete with elaborate rigging and billowing sails, augmented by Elaine J. McCarthy<\/a>\u2019s striking animated projections, sometimes makes it difficult to spot the principals among the many sailors, but Foglia is usually successful in foregrounding the five around whom the opera focuses.<\/p>\n