![]() ![]() McCarthy, and Donald Holder (set designer, projection designer, and lighting designer, respectively) produces some breathtaking effects. A viewer totally unfamiliar with Melville’s novel would have little difficulty following and understanding this plot.Ī combination of abstraction and a degree of simplicity in the solid physical sets and extreme complexity in the computerized visual effects, designed by Robert Brill, Elaine J. For Moby Dick, librettist Gene Scheer has produced a text that skips the opening, land-based scenes in the novel but impressively and convincingly develops a complex, multi-layered set of relationships, and does so with a dramatic clarity and impetus almost unprecedented in opera. Each of these is characterized by an extremely literate approach that both honors the source but is not afraid to comment and expand on themes from the source. Opera based on American literature has become almost a subgenre-witness Adamo’s Little Women, Previn’s S treetcar Named Desire, Heggie’s own Dead Man Walking, Rorem’s Our Town. Several other trends are at work here as well. ![]() So far, the integration of computer graphics with live, acoustical, dramatic performances has been tentative with Moby Dick, the computerized visual effects and the music are inseparable on an unprecedented level. The hybrid cinematic-live music productions of Philip Glass, the re-creation of classic film with live orchestral accompaniment, the production of orchestral concerts inspired by computer games, and the opulent special effects at rock concerts, are all significant manifestations of a whole new branch of musical production. Crowd scenes, battle scenes, underwater scenes, ascensions or descents to or from heaven or hell have all happened on the operatic stage before, often decorated by-or as decoration for-great music by Handel, Mozart, Wagner, or Puccini.īut the extraordinary and ongoing refinement of computer graphics has created amazing new possibilities. Opera as spectacle is as old as opera itself. But Moby Dick proved that a fine score, performed by an ensemble of great singers and instrumentalists, can, in combination with vividly imagined, well-executed special effects and computer graphics, produce a thrilling emotional response. Live opera will never surpass the cinema when it comes to making children fly or mountains crumble, particularly in an era when computer graphics can make anything appear to happen. Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick, based on Herman Melville’s 19th-century whaling epic, embodies, combines, and distills several long-term trends in what might be called-with either approbation or disdain-a “special effects” opera. Along with a new opera, a new chapter in opera history may have opened Friday night at Winspear Opera House. ![]()
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