A Whale of a Tale to Tell You, Lads
What is the Met Opera Doing?
I like opera because melodrama is fun, and a full orchestra is fun, and a guy who looks like a portly longshoreman singing with the voice of an angel is funny. Basically, you go to the opera because you were the sort of kid who thought it was awesome when Bugs Bunny tormented Elmer to the tune of the Barber of Seville overture. Or you go because you’re a snob. I think the Met had the latter idea in mind when they put on Moby Dick this year.
In theory, if you’re going to write a new English language opera, Moby Dick should be perfect source material. It’s a dramatic but streamlined story (you can ignore all the chapters about how to skin a whale or about how people in the 1800s classified whales as fish) and you can pick whichever of the book’s 500+ themes you’d like to focus on. What’s more, you have free reign to write whatever lyrics1 you’d like since reading – much less singing – Melville is the literary equivalent of swallowing a brick sideways. Lines like, “In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again.” don’t exactly roll off the tongue. In this context, shoe-horning in as many direct quotes as possible was a bold choice. Thankfully, they were set to a largely discordant score, slightly less annoying than a 10-hour long Hare Krishna chant;2 otherwise, the audience may have enjoyed themselves. The closest the performance came to anything resembling a “song” was a “tough, rare, and bloody” routine wherein they did a whole number about the (not thematically super important) chapter where Stubb eats a whale steak. I think this was meant to be catchy:
“Tough, rare and bloody!
Whale steak!!
[dissonance]
Whale steak!”
But if the lyrics were bad, the score was just awful. The audience keeps waiting for a forceful (they’re harpooning whales after all) piece of actual music but it never arrives. Something like Flight of the Valkyries would’ve been great for the final chase, but just cribbing the Jaws score would have been a huge improvement. My ticket, for not a particularly great seat, was $249, and video games have better scores… I’m ever so slightly miffed at that. It’s like they hired a foley artist rather than a composer.
Meanwhile, the plot choices are bizarre. The production starts with the Pequod already at sea, which scotches any chance including the book’s foreshadowing of a doomed voyage or any of Queequeg’s interesting scenes. Ishmael is referred to as “Greenhorn” the whole time, up until he’s rescued at the end. When asked his name by the relief ship’s captain, he responds “Call me Ishmael!” as a groan rises from the audience. Pip is given a major role. On the one hand, I understand that the character (being a cabin boy) is about the only way to integrate a female voice into the show. On the other, Pip goes mad, so spending half the run time with a character running around the stage freaking out is annoying. They acted out the chapter where Pip is lost at sea by suspending the actress on a wire and having her flail around in midair – it felt like some combination of Will Ferrel in Zoolander and Mike Myers in Austin Powers. Paradoxically, despite an ad nauseum focus on Pip, they edited out any of the book’s better themes surrounding him. For instance, at one point, Pip goes overboard (he did that a lot) and Stubb admonishes him, saying a whale would sell for 30 times what he would. Melville was criticizing slavery there, in a way that would have been obvious to readers when the book was published. It’s a brief point in the book, so I wouldn’t say you’d have to include it in an opera; but in an opera that focuses relentlessly on Pip, it’s an odd omission.
Overall, it’s just bad. The biggest failing is the music. Mozart’s operas aren’t great but at least listening to them can be pleasant. But, a dull plot set to music that goes out of its way not to be melodic is obnoxious. It’s very disappointing because I would like to keep opera from becoming a dead art. It’s good that the Met wants to put on new productions, but it’s silly that they think seem to think that the costumes and the sets are what matter, that the plot and the composition can be phoned in. Opera is not supposed to be an acquired taste! You’re not supposed to need context to appreciate it. That’s why cartoons do opera episodes.3 You’re not supposed to try for, “well the music sucks, and the acting was grating, but boy does it make me cultured.”
Some other thoughts
While it’s not a new work, the Met did put on Stories of Hoffman last fall. It felt very modern because Offenbach was ahead of his time. It even has an act speaking to fear of automation. Most importantly, it has good music, it’s trippy, and it’s fun. Why can’t this be the Met’s guide for newer productions? If nothing else, do more Offenbach. Orpheus in the Underworld would be great, given that it pokes fun at the Orpheus and Eurydice myth and that an Orpheus based musical was just a smash hit.4 (Moreover, it’s funny, and who doesn’t like can-can music?)
I also went to Anthony and Cleopatra this season, another new production. If anything, it was worse. Listening to direct Shakespeare quotes being sung at you takes one right back to being a child as some middle-aged lector shout-sings Psalms to the pews on Sunday mornings. I don’t think I can do a full review because I walked out at intermission (and I wasn’t the only one). I just fundamentally don’t understand why the Met thinks that the music in any opera written after 1930 should be dissonant and bad.
Okay, “libretto” if you’re annoying.
When I lived in Hamilton Heights they had the brownstone next door. Now, I sort of despise the types of New Yorkers who call in noise complaints or moan about how skyscrapers are tall (it’s like they forgot where they decided to live)… but ten hours of chants reverberating through the walls would try the patience of Job.
Looney Toons of course, but, from the top of my head, also Futurama, Hey Arnold, even Pinky and the Brain.
The musical, of course, is awful, because musicals are so ham-fistedly obsessed with being fun that they’re not fun. Operas are usually about long dramatic lead ups to either a wedding or a murder, which is fun because it’s a little silly but everyone is pretending it isn’t.