How the Late Terrence McNally Inspired Composer Jake Heggie to Write a Moby-Dick Opera

Following his Met Opera debut last season with Dead Man Walking, composer Jake Heggie returns this month for the company premiere of Moby-Dick, his grand adaptation of Herman Melville’s heaven-storming classic (now running through March 29). With a libretto by Gene Scheer and an enveloping staging by Leonard Foglia, Moby-Dick welcomes audiences aboard the Pequod to experience literature’s immortal search for the white whale—and for answers to life’s deepest question.

After a harrowing night on the Pequod, as the whaleship rolled wildly in a biblical tempest and the eerie glow of St. Elmo’s fire flickered from the mainmast, Captain Ahab finally spots the white whale. Shimmering strings give way to warlike drums and brass as Ahab assembles the crew for battle, while his first mate begs him one last time to call off the ill-fated pursuit. Uniting as one before their encounter with the leviathan, the galvanized whalemen belt out their final refrain—“His blood will end our crusade!”—with rousing outbursts from the orchestra echoing their rallying cry.

This penultimate sequence from Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick is just one example of the high drama and musical thrill that make the work one of the defining operas of the 21st century, a reputation formed immediately upon its enormously acclaimed maiden voyage at the Dallas Opera in 2010 and burnished by further successes at major houses across the country, including in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago. Now, the opera drops anchor at the Met, arriving in Leonard Foglia’s celebrated production and featuring an all-star cast with Maestro Karen Kamensek on the podium.

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick chronicles the voyage of the Pequod under the command of the peg-legged, monomaniacal Captain Ahab, consumed by his obsessive pursuit of the white whale that maimed him. But in addition to a riveting adventure story, the novel is a profound exploration of human nature and the human condition, touching on the search for truth and wisdom in different spiritual traditions, race relations, America’s place in the world, the values and customs of distant peoples, and philosophical considerations of the ego and self—all of which are present in the opera. “The ship is a microcosm of the world,�� Heggie says. “Melville made sure all different sorts of cultures, identities, and religions are represented on the journey."

The idea to adapt Melville’s novel into an opera originated with the late playwright Terrence McNally, with whom Heggie had worked on previous projects, including his first opera, Dead Man Walking. Though at first intimidated by the scope of an operatic take on Moby-Dick, Heggie found tremendous power in how the novel moves between the individual and the collective. “It’s an intimate story where there’s a very clear problem. You’re out on the ocean. There’s no place to turn,�� he explains. “You’re surrounded by God knows what�� underneath you and above you and within the heart of the person next to you.��

McNally ultimately handed over the project to librettist Gene Scheer, who realized that the visceral power of Melville’s language made it a perfect fit for the stage. For Scheer, the most obvious way to begin distilling a 135-chapter novel into a 60-page libretto was to embrace the juiciest bits of that language, and he estimates that nearly half of the libretto is taken word-for-word from Melville’s text.

“It’s an extraordinary piece, Shakespearean in depth,�� Scheer says, noting especially the distinct and compelling voices that Melville creates to reveal the essence and internal motivations of each member of the motley crew—from first mate Starbuck’s well-intentioned but impotent hand-wringing to famous lines like Ahab’s furious outburst of vengeful pride: “Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.�� But it is the marriage of Melville and Heggie that ultimately defines the work. “The libretto is just the surface,�� Scheer says, “but the ocean is the music. And Moby-Dick has beautiful music all the way through.��

Brandon Jovanovich and Peter Mattei in *Moby-Dick* at the Metropolitan Opera Karen Almond / Met Opera

Heggie was inspired from the very start. “I read the book, and I thought, the music is all there.�� Replete with expressive orchestral underscoring, intimate arias, and dramatic ensembles, Heggie’s rich score matches the breadth of Melville’s text and recalls the seafaring sounds of Britten’s Billy Budd combined with soaring moments of Wagnerian grandeur. And much like Scheer, Heggie let Melville’s characters and language guide his work. “It’s the depth of what’s in all of those hearts that really inspires me,�� he says.

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. After his first six arduous months of work, Heggie was still struggling to fulfill his vision for the music on the page. Finally, he built a series of musical motifs—which ultimately became the foundation of the score—from a pervasive four-chord theme that first emerged as he was developing Ahab’s melancholic Act I monologue. After that breakthrough, he discarded nearly 60 pages of music and started fresh. “All of a sudden, the music and harmony emerged, and I wrote the entire score in four months.��

Some of the opera’s peak moments take shape in scenes that build from a single character to a crowd of of voices. For example, at the top of Act I, we greet the principal characters one by one before whalemen crowd the deck to prepare the ship for its next expedition, leading to one of several heart-pounding ensembles that feature the stout male voices of the Met Chorus. But Heggie also finds immense power in the opera’s most intimate scenes, such as Starbuck’s aria at the end of Act I, when the first mate, determined to put an end to Ahab’s mad quest, breaks into the captain’s quarters and considers assassinating him while he sleeps.

These moments of tension and connection among the principal characters are brought to life this season by what Heggie calls “a dream cast.�� Brandon Jovanovich takes on the demanding heldentenor role of Captain Ahab after recent appearances in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and leading baritone Peter Mattei portrays Starbuck, his first English role at the Met. Tenor Stephen Costello reprises his acclaimed portrayal of Greenhorn (the opera’s version of Ishmael), the role that he created in Moby-Dick’s Dallas premiere, alongside bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, who adds another major appearance to his growing Met resume as the Polynesian harpooneer Queequeg, and soprano Janai Brugger in a moving turn as the hapless cabin boy Pip.

One of Heggie’s closest collaborators, director Leonard Foglia makes his Met debut with an immersive and imaginative staging. “Once I heard Jake’s prelude, it all came into focus,�� Foglia explains. “I wanted an environment where people feel like they are on the ship, that they are part of it.�� Through Robert Brill’s larger-than-life scenery, the audience finds themselves on the ship’s main deck amid towering masts and weblike rigging, with the lower deck holding the blazing tryworks for rendering whale blubber. Swooping sails and wooden decking backdrops provide the ideal surfaces for Elaine J. McCarthy’s projections—including constellations that give way to scrimshaw illustrations, white-capped waves, and harpoons streaking toward their targets. Her projections also add dimension to the scenery and shift vantage points, prominently on display when the crew leaves the ship and climbs into small whaleboats to pursue their prey. Suddenly the perspective changes, as if the audience is looking down on the hunt from the Pequod. Foglia’s creative team also includes Jane Greenwood, who designed the elaborate, period-accurate costumes, as well as lighting designer Gavan Swift and movement director Keturah Stickann. “Lenny’s production is beyond anything I could have imagined,�� Heggie says. “It’s so spectacular.��

Fifteen years on from Moby-Dick’s premiere, Heggie remains thrilled by the impact his opera has on audiences, and he feels that, like the great works from ages past with which it will share the Met stage this season, it communicates enduring truths.

“It’s a story of Melville’s time, a story of times before that, and a story of our time,�� he says. “As we watch authoritarian figures rise to power all over the world, I feel Moby-Dick has even more resonance today than it did in 2010.�� Although at the opera’s end it is the white whale that sends the Pequod to the bottom, Melville reminds us who is truly to blame: “For there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.��