The opening of Jake Heggie’s opera Moby Dick at the Metropolitan Opera was sufficiently newsworthy for the London Times to commission a first-night review from Kevin Ng. The article went on line at lunchtime, London time, today.
Four whole hours passed before the NY Times caught up with a Zachary Woolfe review at noon NY time.
It’s dog-bites-dog as ever on legacy media. The two critics agree on the limitations of Heggie’s score.
Ng writes: Despite the constantly shifting sets, there remain long stretches that remain dramatically and musically inert. Melville’s other great nautical work was Billy Budd, and Heggie at times matches the orchestral ferocity of Britten’s opera. Elsewhere the score evokes Debussy and Sibelius, as well as Philip Glass-esque undulations that become tiresome.
Woolfe writes: A piece, in other words, much along the lines of “Billy Budd,” Benjamin Britten’s opera based on another seafaring Melville tragedy in which a ship becomes a petri dish for archetypal struggles.
This is where the ambitions of Heggie’s “Moby-Dick” adaptation run up against his limitations as a composer. “Billy Budd” fascinates because of the haunting complexities of Britten’s music, but the meditations in this “Moby-Dick” end up feeling dully one-note, as shallow as a tide pool.
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