Jeanine Tesori / LIBRETTO BY George Brant
Grounded
Upcoming Performances
Overview
Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, has its awaited company premiere. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, headlines in the tour-de-force role of Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she adjusts to this new way of doing battle, she struggles under the pressure to be the perfect soldier, the perfect wife, and the perfect mother all at the same time. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, leading a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who sweeps Jess off her feet. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.
Content Advisory: Grounded contains adult language, war sequences, and flash effects.
Please note that video cameras will be in operation during the Oct 16 and Oct 19 performances as part of the Met’s Live in HD series of cinema transmissions.
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Libretto by George Brant, based on his play Grounded
Production a gift of Andrew J. Martin-Weber and Lynne and Richard Pasculano
Additional support from the Laidlaw Foundation and The H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. and Oscar Tang Endowment Fund
Grounded is part of the Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera
Developed by the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program
A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and Washington National Opera
Languages
Languages sung in Grounded
Sung In
English
Titles
Title languages displayed for Grounded
Met Titles In
- English
- German
- Spanish
Timeline
Timeline for the show, Grounded
Estimated Run Time
2 hrs 20 mins
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House Opens
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Act I
60 mins
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Intermission
30 mins
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Act II
50 mins
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Opera Ends
Cast
Select a date from the dropdown to filter cast by date of performance
World Premiere: Washington National Opera, 2023
Commissioned through the Metropolitan Opera / Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, Grounded depicts one woman’s journey from a successful F-16 combat pilot in the United States Air Force to a Reaper drone operator in the Nevada desert. A thrilling, fast-paced adaptation of an award-winning play by George Brant, who also wrote the libretto, the opera explores the psychological tolls of modern warfare, as well as the roles of women in the armed forces and in society at large.
Creators
Jeanine Tesori (b. 1961) is the most prolific female composer in American theater history and one of the first two women ever commissioned to compose an opera for the Met. Her stage credits include the Tony Award–winning Best Musicals Kimberly Akimbo and Fun Home. Grounded is her fourth opera, following most recently Blue, which garnered the Music Critics Association Award for Best New Opera. The libretto is by playwright George Brant (b. 1969), who wrote the play on which the opera is based.
Production
Michael Mayer
Set Designer
Mimi Lien
Costume Designer
Tom Broecker
Lighting Designer
Kevin Adams
Co–Projection Designer
Jason H. Thompson
Co–Projection Designer
Kaitlyn Pietras
Sound Designer
Palmer Hefferan
Choreographer
David Neumann
Dramaturg
Paul Cremo
Composer
Jeanine Tesori
Librettist
George Brant
Setting
The opera is set in the very recent past and reflects the contemporary phenomenon of warfare conducted remotely. The locations represent Jess’s surroundings—the skies above Iraq and civilian and military locales in Wyoming and Nevada.
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Music
Tesori’s score moves freely among the realistic, psychic, and technological aspects of the drama. The role of Jess, in particular, lives vibrantly in all these dimensions. Her music is dreamy and somewhat disembodied while she sings about the experience of flying her jet, conversational in her early interactions with the Commander, lush and flirtatious in her romance with Eric, and then, as her mental health degrades, detached from him and her world—so much so that her character is bifurcated with the introduction of the soprano role Also Jess, a kind of alter ego that helps process the trauma of her job. The splitting of Jess’s psyche also allows her to sing moving duets “with herself.”
