‘Grounded’ and ‘Indra’s Net’ Reviews: Modern War and Ancient Legend

At the Metropolitan Opera, Jeanine Tesori’s work about an American drone pilot proves eerie and emotionally resonant; Meredith Monk’s performance piece at Park Avenue Armory takes inspiration from Asian religions to affirm our interconnectedness.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 7, 2024 at 5:21 pm ET

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Emily D’Angelo (center) and company in ‘Grounded.’

 PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

New York

When Jeanine Tesori’s “Grounded” had its world premiere at Washington National Opera last year, it was slack and overstuffed. For its Metropolitan Opera season-opening premiere in September, the composer and librettist George Brant wielded their red pencils to admirable effect. With 45 minutes cut from the score, the new “Grounded,” which runs through Oct. 19, is tighter, clearer and more emotionally resonant.

Based on Mr. Brant’s 2013 one-woman play about a fighter pilot who is reassigned to flying drones after she becomes pregnant, “Grounded” now delves more directly into how remote warfare undermines Jess’s sanity. Scenes were trimmed, events consolidated or resituated, and some episodes eliminated entirely; the opera now has 32 scenes instead of 46. This was particularly helpful in Act 1, which had spent too much time setting up Jess’s pivot to marriage and motherhood. The shorter version actually does a better job of establishing her attachment to her husband, Eric, and her daughter, Sam, so in Act 2, we feel what she is leaving behind as she becomes increasingly unmoored from reality. 

Consolidating the drone-warfare scenes intensifies the trauma of Jess’s new job. As a fighter pilot flying in “the Blue,” she had the community of other pilots; in Las Vegas, as an operator endlessly tracking convoys halfway around the world on a gray screen, she has only the cacophony of the supervising “Kill Chain” (five offstage male voices) in her headset, and perpetual surveillance makes her feel watched as well as a watcher. It is clearer now that the drone’s cameras show her the faces and body parts of the people she kills, helping explain her crucial act—she crashes the drone to avoid killing the target’s young daughter. In the original version, she thought the child was Sam; in the revision, she knows it isn’t, which is less psychologically interesting but more operatic.

Mezzo Emily D’Angelo has worked her way deeper into the principal role; her Jess was more potent and acute in New York than in Washington. Several singers were new to their roles: Tenor Ben Bliss brought lyricism and authority to Eric; Ellie Dehn’s bright soprano supplied a contrasting timbre as Also Jess, Jess’s dissociated self and the only other adult female in the opera; bass-baritone Greer Grimsley was a gruff Commander. Baritone Kyle Miller ably repeated his portrayal of the irreverent Sensor, the 19-year-old gamer who operates the drone camera. The Met’s much larger chorus was a shadowy, ominous presence as the Drone Squad that Jess imagines; Yannick Nézet-Séguin brought out the military bravura and eerie menace in the orchestration.

Michael Mayer’s Met-scaled production looked imposing in the house. Mimi Lien’s two-level set situates the world of war above and the home front below. Vivid LED projections by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras create the contrasts between Jess’s beloved Blue and the gray she now lives in, along with pixelations, blinding explosions, the green simulations of a control screen, and one horrifying, super-size appearance of the Reaper drone itself. Kevin Adams’s lighting delineated the abyss between the warmth of Jess’s home and the chilly drone trailer. At the end, court-martialed and imprisoned, Jess sits in a small pool of light in the darkness. Deprived of the flight suit (designed by Tom Broecker) that once told her who she was, she declares that she is free—perhaps to become something new. 

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Meredith Monk in ‘Indra’s Net’ at Park Avenue Armory. 

PHOTO: MARIA BARANOVA

There’s a shamanistic quality to Meredith Monk, who has been creating her unique form of multidisciplinary art since the 1960s. Her aim for “Indra’s Net,”which had its North American premiere at the Park Avenue Armory in September, was to “create an immersive installation/performance work evoking both vastness and intimacy and affirming the interconnectedness of life,” an antidote to the “fragmentation, disconnection and uncertainty of contemporary life.” The title refers to a Buddhist/Hindu legend about a king who stretches a boundless net across the universe; faceted jewels at every intersection are unique yet reflect all the others.

For the 80-minute piece, staged on a circular white space in the cavernous expanse of the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Ms. Monk and seven white-clad singers from her Vocal Ensemble worked to embody those principles physically and through Ms. Monk’s distinctive wordless vocal style. One singer welcomed the others; two strolled arm-in-arm around the perimeter, seemingly in conversation; Ms. Monk started a call-and-response with one of the male singers; two others had an impassioned debate. In one extended section, individual instruments (there were 16 players) launched a six-note sequence; others took it up, as did the voices, creating a richly layered, meditative tapestry. A singer and a trumpet duetted; later, two percussionists joined a jaunty symphony of tongue clicks and clucks and got their own solo riffs—one drumming on a metal can, the other on what looked like a ping-pong paddle.

The simple, organic staging, directed by Ms. Monk, complemented the musical variety of vocal techniques, syllabic utterances and instrumental timbres. Yoshio Yabara designed the costumes and scenery; Joe Levasseur the lighting. Video shot from above and projected on a white circle behind the stage emphasized the netlike movement patterns; a “mirror chorus” of eight singers in black occasionally enriched the visual design as well as the sound. For the final sequence, orchestra members with portable instruments joined the singers on the stage, completing the interconnectedness. Even without words, some of Ms. Monk’s idea reads. But for the full effect it’s a good thing she told us what it was in advance.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).