Jeanine Tesori / LIBRETTO BY George Brant
Grounded
LIVE IN HD
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, wrestles with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st-century warfare. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, portrays 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 struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the Met premiere of Tesori’s kaleidoscopic score and a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband. 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. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.
Content Advisory: Grounded contains adult language and war sequences.
English StreamText captioning is available for the Met’s transmission of Grounded here. A transcript of the transmission will also be available to view after the live performance.
Buy tickets for Grounded live in the opera house here.
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
SUNG IN
ENGLISH
Timeline
Timeline for the show, Grounded
ESTIMATED RUN TIME
2 HRS 45 MINS, WITH ONE INTERMISSION
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.
Videos
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.”
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