Carmen

JAKE HEGGIE / LIBRETTO BY Gene Scheer

Moby-Dick

Upcoming Performances

Monday

Mar 3 at 8 PM

Saturday

Mar 8 at 8 PM

Tuesday

Mar 11 at 7 PM

Saturday

Mar 15 at 8 PM

Wednesday

Mar 19 at 7:30 PM

Saturday

Mar 22 at 8 PM

Tuesday

Mar 25 at 7:30 PM

Saturday

Mar 29 at 1 PM

Overview

Following the haunting Met premiere of his first opera, Dead Man Walking, composer Jake Heggie returns to the company with his 2010 adaptation of Herman Melville’s sea-drenched, heaven-storming epic. A cast of standouts comes together on the decks of the Pequod, with tenor Brandon Jovanovich starring as the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, implacable in his pursuit of the white whale; tenor Stephen Costello as Greenhorn, the opera’s version of Ishmael; baritone Peter Mattei as the even-keeled first mate Starbuck; and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the Polynesian harpooneer Queequeg. The cast also features soprano Janai Brugger as Pip, tenor William Burden as Flask, and baritone Malcolm MacKenzie as Stubb. Maestro Karen Kamensek takes the podium for a stunning staging by Leonard Foglia that arrives at the Met newly enlarged and refined following acclaimed runs in Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

Music by Jake Heggie
Libretto by Gene Scheer
Based on the book by Herman Melville

Production a gift of C. Graham Berwind, III and The Eugene McDermott Foundation

Additional support from Gordon P. Getty and Franci Neely

Moby-Dick is part of the Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative

Production co-owned by The Dallas Opera, State Opera of South Australia, Calgary Opera, San Diego Opera, and San Francisco Opera

Languages

Languages sung in Moby-Dick

Sung In

English

Titles

Title languages displayed for Moby-Dick

Met Titles In

  • English
  • German
  • Spanish

Timeline

Timeline for the show, Moby-Dick

Estimated Run Time

3 hrs 10 mins

  • House Opens

  • Act I

    85 mins

  • Intermission

    30 mins

  • Act II

    75 mins

  • Opera Ends

Moby-Dick

World Premiere: The Dallas Opera, 2010
Herman Melville’s famously sprawling, richly meditative Moby-Dick is a work about nearly everything. In translating the grandiose source material for the stage, composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer distilled the story to its core elements, while nonetheless retaining the novel’s speculative allegory alongside its gritty realism. The result is an epic, thrilling musical drama exploring the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Creators

Jake Heggie (b. 1961) is an American composer known for his orchestral and choral work, and especially his operas. His first, Dead Man Walking, remains the most performed contemporary opera of the last two decades and had its Met premiere on Opening Night of the 2023–24 season. The libretto is by Gene Scheer (b. 1958), an American lyricist and songwriter who frequently collaborates with Heggie. In addition to his undisputed masterpiece, Moby-Dick, American author Herman Melville (1819–91) also penned a number of other novels, short stories, and poems.

Leonard Foglia

Production

Leonard Foglia

Robert Brill

Set Designer

Robert Brill

Jane Greenwood

Costume Designer

Jane Greenwood

Gavan Swift

Lighting Designer

Gavan Swift

Elaine J. McCarthy

Projection Designer

Elaine J. McCarthy

Keturah Stickann

Movement Director

Keturah Stickann

Jake Heggie

Composer

Jake Heggie

Librettist

Gene Scheer

Setting

Moby-Dick

Melville based much of the narrative on his own experiences as a sailor between 1842 and 1845, as well as on accounts of the destruction of the whaleship Essex by an enraged sperm whale in 1820. His novel takes place in various ports (notably Nantucket) and aboard the Pequod. The opera, however, is set entirely at sea.

Videos

Music

Heggie’s score evokes the grandeur of tone and scope of the novel’s prose, and from its very first bars, delineates individuals and ideas with quasi-Wagnerian motifs. The orchestra is featured prominently, as is the all-male chorus, who give voice to a range of emotions. The opera’s most striking moments come as solo voices are combined in duets and ensembles that express the many confrontations in the human journey: good vs. evil, love vs. death, hope vs. despair.

Moby-Dick