Heggie and Scheer’s Moby-Dick: A Grand Opera for the Twenty-first Century

237 Pages·2013·17 MB·English

by  Robert K. Wallace

Heggie and Scheer’s Moby-Dick

HEGGIE AND SCHEER’S
Moby-Dick
A GRAND OPERA FOR THE 21st CENTURY
Robert K. Wallace
featuring
Libretto by
Gene Scheer
Photographs by
Karen Almond
University of north texas Press Denton, texas
Text ©2013 Robert K. Wallace
Libretto ©2013 Gene Scheer
Photographs ©2013 Karen Almond
Foreword ©2013 Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer
All rights reserved.
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University of North Texas Press
1155 Union Circle #311336
Denton, TX 76203-5017
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48.1984. Binding materials
have been chosen for durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallace, Robert K., 1944-
Heggie and Scheer’s Moby-Dick : a grand opera for the twenty-first century / by Robert K.
Wallace ; featuring libretto by Gene Scheer ; photographs by Karen Almond.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57441-507-0 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-57441-520-9 (ebook)
1. Heggie, Jake, 1961- Moby-Dick. 2. Opera--Production and direction--Texas--Dallas. 3.
Operas--First performances--Texas--Dallas. 4. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Musical settings--
History and criticism. I. Almond, Karen. II. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Moby Dick. III. Scheer,
Gene. Moby-Dick. IV. Title.
ML410.H432W35 2013
792.5’42--dc23
2012042476
Book design by Mark Lerner
Frontispiece of Ahab in his cabin under the fire of the Try-Works is by Karen Almond.
All photos by Karen Almond unless otherwise noted.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer vii
Acknowledgments ix
prologue Setting the Stage 1
part 1 Creative Voyage, 2005–2010 11
part 2 Libretto by Gene Scheer: Moby-Dick, An Opera in Two Acts 59
part 3 Rehearsing a World Premiere, March–April 2010 93
part 4 Moby-Dick on the Opera Stage 121
act 1 123
act 2 163
bows, backstage, and bios 197
epilogue Sailing On 205
Notes 213
References and Resources 215
Index 221

FOREWORD BY JAKE HEGGIE AND GENE SCHEER
The journey To opening nighT of our opera, Moby-Dick, was one of the most exciting and terrifying either of us
could have imagined. From the day in April 2008, when we set to work in earnest on Nantucket Island, we were aflame
with the power of Melville’s great novel while faced with the daunting task of distilling and reimagining it as an operatic
stage work of less than three hours. Was it really possible to achieve, or were we, too, chasing a white whale, caught
up in a mad fantasy?
Sustained by our belief that opera—the most powerful expression of music theater—would be the ideal way to
transfer Moby-Dick to the stage, we were cheered on and supported by a brave consortium of five major opera com-
panies, as well as a brilliant cast and creative team. Everyone involved was faced with immense hurdles. Together,
as a team, with the tremendous spirit of Melville’s invention to guide us, we negotiated our way through numerous
drafts of the libretto, score, staging and design: a path that included periods of writer’s block, near despair, exciting
breakthroughs, workshops, cuts, revisions, revelations, and suddenly a complete opera. Even after all the work and
rehearsals, the path was fraught right up to opening night at the Dallas Opera when the entire computer system for
the production crashed two hours before curtain. It was revived just in time and, amazingly, the downbeat occurred
at 7:30 p.m., on schedule.
Welcome to the high-wire act of opera and the operatic voyage of Moby-Dick.
Robert Wallace’s beautifully comprehensive chronicle is illustrated with Karen Almond’s vivid photography. We are
deeply grateful for their passion and commitment to telling the story as they open a door for you to the mysterious,
rather mad work of creating a big, bold, new American opera for the 21st century.
viii foreword
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
i knew i wanTed To wriTe This book when I experienced the world premiere production of Heggie and Scheer’s
Moby-Dick in Dallas on May 16, 2010. I knew I could write such a book when interviewing Jake Heggie in San Fran-
cisco one month later. The illuminating answers he gave during our day-long interview, the working manuscripts
he showed me in the studio in which he had composed the opera, and his willingness to ease my access to the rest
of the creative team, to all of the principal singers, and to key personnel at The Dallas Opera inspired me to take
the plunge and devote myself to writing a book that would allow readers to experience how Heggie and his libret-
tist Gene Scheer had created the score and the text of the opera with the help of dramaturg Leonard Foglia and
conductor Patrick Summers; how eight principal singers, forty male choristers, seventy-five symphony musicians,
and a surplus of supernumeraries had brought the score to life in five weeks of rehearsals in Dallas supported by
an extraordinary production team; and how the audiences that filled the Winspear Opera House in late April and
early May of 2010 were transported into the rare kind of ecstasy that the world premiere of an operatic masterpiece
can create.
From the beginning, librettist Gene Scheer made his text available and shared invaluable insights into process by
which he turned Melville’s gargantuan, intimidating novel into a tight, challenging, singable opera script. Leonard Foglia
helped me understand the role of a theatrical professional in translating the text and the music into a performance