The Met telecast Jeanine Tesori’s new opera today. It also opened the company’s current season. The opera is an extended version of librettist George Brant’s one-woman play of the same name. The protagonist (Jess) is a woman jet pilot who is grounded because she gets pregnant after a one-night stand. She decides to keep the baby even after her commanding officer offers to arrange to quietly have her terminate the pregnancy. She then shows up at the house of the guy who knocked her up. He asks her to stay and marries her. Sure I know what you’re thinking – but this is opera where a lot of strange things happen.
After about five years of domesticity and motherhood, she decided to return to the Air Force. She can’t get her old job as a pilot back and is assigned to control a drone in a base near Las Vegas. She offs bad guys thousands of miles away. She gradually loses her mind as she can see up close the results of her bombings. She also sees an alternate self who surprisingly has little of interest to say other than be a marker for a psychotic break. Eventually, she crashes the drone rather than take the chance of killing the target’s daughter. The target and presumably his daughter too is killed by another drone that was following the one controlled by Jess. She’s arrested and sentenced to a long jail term for disobeying orders and destroying government property. She seems unconcerned about the fates of her daughter and husband as she settles down in her jail cell at the final curtain.
The composer and librettist think they have written a piece about the horror and cruelty of war, but they have done something else that I think they are unaware of. Jess is fine when she’s dealing death, destruction, and mayhem from the sky where she’s far from the scene of carnage by the time her bombs hit their targets. She says so near the opera’s beginning. In fact, she loves her job. She’s only bothered by what she does when she can see the effects of her actions. So, it’s OK to go bombs away without viewing the body parts. Jess has no imagination or insight into what she’s doing. I expect that Tesori and Brant fall into the same category.
Now that the real message of the piece has been sketched, how was the show? The unneeded F-bombs aside, pretty good. Michael Mayer staged the Met’s most recent iterations of Rigoletto and La Traviata in productions that would have destroyed anything other than an indestructible masterpiece. He did much better with Marnie an opera that was as forgettable as the weather report in Minsk. Myer used two levels to depict Jess’s life in the air and on the ground. He also used a lot of LED screens, some voice-activated. Some of the critics of the prima found these lights and levels either distracting or irrelevant. I thought they worked pretty well. The staging was a valid way to tell Jess’s deranged story. Mayer is going to get his hands on another Verdi masterpiece (Aida) later this season. It may be his last chance to prove he can handle an opera that will endure.
The singers we all first rate. The opera was written for the Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo. She was the focus of all of the action and was in every scene. She was both vocally and dramatically on target throughout. There’s a bit of a buzz in the middle of her voice making her sound more suitable for drama rather than lush singing.
Tenor Ben Bliss made as much as possible in his depiction of the Wyoming rancher who fathers Jess’s child and moves to Las Vegas to become a blackjack dealer to allow his wife to go mad from remotely dropping bombs on unspecified enemies of the United States. He has a pleasant tenor that was not pushed by his undemanding role.
Baritone Kyle Miller was effective as Sensor, Jess’s partner in remote bombing. He managed to look 19 the age he gave when quiered about it by Jess. Jess’s daughter Samantha (Sam) was acted and sung by child performer Lucy LoBue. She was good enough not to remind one of Shirley Temple. The rest of the large cast and the Met’s fine chorus got all that Mayer and Tesori asked of them.
Any opera succeeds or flops by its music. Tesori’s score and vocal lines were very interesting. There were several melodies that could move the listener and her writing for orchestra is powerful and dramatically effective. Maestro Nézet-Séguin got a powerful and evocative performance from his splendid orchestra. While I doubt the long-term survival of this opera it’s good enough and was well enough staged and performed to warrant a trip to the encore presentation next week. This work is much better than the typical new operas the Met is force-feeding its audience.
Video director Gary Halvorson as usual had too many endoscopic close-ups that were distracting as well as unneeded. With all the lights and color changes he should have allowed the viewer to see more of what was going on.
If the Met is to survive, indeed if opera is to survive, it will need new works that grip its audience. The Met is desperately trying to find such works, alas without much success. The company had to dip into its endowment to make it through last season. Expensive new operas that don’t capture an audience will cause the Met to become a museum or to fail – perhaps both. At well more than $400 a performance the company may price itself out of the game.
Jeanine Tesori | George Brant
Jess……….Emily D’Angelo
Eric……….Ben Bliss
Commander……….Greer Grimsley
Bar Pilot……….Earle Patriarco
Sam……….Lucy LoBue
Mission Coordinator……….Christopher Bozeka
Ground Control……….Thomas Capobianco
Joint Terminal Attack Controller……….Paul Corona
Safety Observer……….Christopher Job
Judge Advocate General……….Matthew Anchel
Sensor……….Kyle Miller
Also Jess……….Ellie Dehn
Seatwarmer……….Timothy Murray
Mall Employee……….Tyler Simpson
Mall Employee……….Daniel Clark Smith
Conductor……….Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production……….Michael Mayer
Set Designer……….Mimi Lien
Costume Designer……….Tom Broecker
Lighting Designer……….Kevin Adams
Choreographer……….David Neumann
Sound Designer……….Palmer Hefferan
Dramaturg……….Paul Cremo
Co-Projection Designer……….Jason H. Thompson
Co-Projection Designer……….Kaitlyn Pietras
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson
