‘Moby-Dick’ and ‘Fidelio’ Review: Opera Adrift at the Met

The New York company recently opened two underpowered productions: Jake Heggie’s 2010 adaptation of the Herman Melville classic, and Beethoven’s tale of a political prisoner and his wife featuring the star soprano Lise Davidsen.

By 

Heidi Waleson

March 6, 2025 at 5:31 pm ET

A scene from ‘Moby-Dick.’ PHOTO: MET OPERA

New York

If “operatic” is a synonym for “big,” Herman Melville’s sprawling novel “Moby-Dick” should be ideal source material for the stage. Jake Heggie’s 2010 operatic treatment certainly took up a lot of aural and visual space at its Metropolitan Opera premiere on Monday, but there was an emptiness at its heart.

The composer and his librettist, Gene Scheer, pared down Melville’s gargantuan text—with its digressions into whaling ships, cetology, and philosophy—into a conventional narrative tracking Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal quest for revenge on the white whale that took his leg. Everything happens aboard the Pequod; there is just one whale hunt before the fatal finale, and one encounter with another ship (there are nine in the novel). Crucial character episodes are included: The friendship of the innocent young narrator (here called Greenhorn instead of Ishmael) and the pagan Polynesian harpooner Queequeg; the resistance of the first mate, Starbuck, to Ahab’s madness; the loss and recovery of the cabin boy Pip. They are strung together with big choral numbers as the sailors declare their fealty to Ahab and some orchestral interludes evoking the passage of time at sea.

Brandon Jovanovich (center) as Captain Ahab PHOTO: MET OPERA

But Mr. Heggie’s tuneful music fails to supply any underlying sense of danger and impending tragedy. Nor does it depict Ahab’s madness, even in his lengthy arias, which are set in large part to Melville’s own words. Unsurprisingly, the most effective moments are the quietest ones, such as Greenhorn’s almost a cappella, unmoored “Human madness is a cunning and most feline thing,” as he climbs into Queequeg’s coffin near the end of the opera. When Benjamin Britten made an opera out of one of Melville’s other great sea tales, “Billy Budd,” he captured its essence, not just its surface.

Leonard Foglia’s stark production, which was first mounted for the opera’s world premiere at the Dallas Opera and has been to numerous companies since, was satisfyingly expanded to fill the Met stage. Robert Brill’s set features heavy, dark masts, ropes and sails, along with a curved rear wall that becomes an effective canvas for Elaine J. McCarthy’s evocative projections. Her images of the sea and sky, and the lively animated line drawings of the Pequod, depicting it from different vantage points, provide the roiling movement that the music lacks, though the denouement—as Ahab and the ship have their fatal encounter with Moby-Dick—is visually vague. Gavan Swift’s lighting supplies some color; Jane Greenwood’s historically appropriate costumes do not. Mr. Foglia’s direction is largely static, other than a dance that turns into a fight in Act 1.

Mr. Jovanovich PHOTO: MET OPERA

With his forceful tenor, Brandon Jovanovich did the best he could with Ahab’s bland music, expressing the captain’s madness mostly through glares. Mr. Heggie gave him an opening cry, “Infinity!” that recalled the fervent “Esultate!” of Verdi’s Otello, setting us up for disappointment with what followed. The necessary peg-leg prosthesis did not make Mr. Jovanovich’s evening easier. Tenor Stephen Costello, the single holdover from the opera’s premiere, brought a wistful gentleness to Greenhorn; Ryan Speedo Green’s rolling bass-baritone made Queequeg the most straightforward character on the stage. Peter Mattei, who was to sing Starbuck, was ill; his replacement, baritone Thomas Glass, sounded pretty but callow, missing the complexity and gravitas of this character. As the cabin boy Pip, Janai Brugger’s radiant soprano shone in the otherwise all-male texture; she was touching in Pip’s demented scene with Captain Gardiner (Brian Major), who fruitlessly begs Ahab for help. As Stubb and Flask, Malcolm McKenzie and William Burden animated the lighthearted scenes with brio, and the Metropolitan Opera Chorus was at its stalwart best. Conductor Karen Kamensek ably sculpted Mr. Heggie’s grand orchestral statements, which occasionally disguised the fact that there’s little underneath them.

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The spectacular Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, who is fast becoming the darling of the Met, has made several company role debuts in recent seasons. Last Tuesday, she essayed Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” in a revival of the 2000 Jürgen Flimm production, which felt undercooked in every respect. Ms. Davidsen’s gleaming instrument is always beautiful, but she seemed to recede here, underplaying the role of the passionate wife who disguises herself as a young man and takes a job in a jail in order to free her husband Florestan, a political prisoner. Her big aria “Abscheulicher!” lacked explosive fury; she sounded more like the awkward boy she is pretending to be than an avenging angel.

Susanna Mälkki’s conducting also missed the propulsive energy of this rescue thriller—it was smooth, deliberate and often slow. The most exciting moments of the evening belonged to David Butt Philip as Florestan, who displayed heldentenor power without strain. As Marzelline, the jailer’s daughter who has fallen in love with Fidelio (Leonore’s alias), Ying Fang’s bright soprano sparkled. René Pape was low energy as Rocco the jailer, playing the amiable paterfamilias; the harshness of Tomasz Konieczny’s bass-baritone worked well for the villainous Don Pizarro; Magnus Dietrich, in his house debut, was a nicely petulant Jaquino, Marzelline’s suitor; and Stephen Milling brought a weighty authority to Don Fernando, who arrives to save the day and put an end to tyranny. 

The production, designed by Robert Israel, updates the action to modern times. In the first scene, Marzelline and Jaquino are cleaning guns that are later collected by Pizarro’s soldiers, watched by the prisoners in three levels of cells on stage left; during the exuberant finale, soldiers hoisted the blood-streaked Pizarro onto a horse statue, suggesting that the new regime may well be as violent as the old. Gina Lapinski’s direction of the revival was haphazard—the busy activity of the Rocco-Marzelline-Fidelio scenes was hard to follow. Ms. Davidsen was also required to climb down a ladder from the very top of the stage into Florestan’s dungeon—she is visibly pregnant, and her extreme caution was notable. She returns next season in a new role and a new production, headlining Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” which may show her in a better light.

Ms. Waleson writes about 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).