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When \u201cMoby Dick\u201d opens at the Metropolitan Opera this week, audiences will experience a deeply American story of unchecked ambition, fomented grievances and a self-destructive desire for revenge.<\/p>\n
Based on Herman Melville\u2019s 1851 novel, the opera<\/a> delivers an economical and resolute retelling of the fateful tale of the Pequod, a ship in pursuit of a vengeful white whale. The libretto, by Gene Scheer, hits the book\u2019s main conflicts without losing track of the action. The score, by Jake Heggie, is graceful and propulsive. The opera\u2019s ending is certain and clear.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably fair to say that more people know the story of the white whale from parodies or synopses than from reading \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d But an adaptation is not just a summary of the book\u2019s major events. A society obsessed with efficiencies can be overly focused on directness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Skillful though it is, the opera, which had its premiere<\/a> in Houston in 2010, has a kind of scrubbed and airless storytelling that leaves the singularity of the novel behind. This is the sort of adaptation that audiences have long responded to \u2014 a simplification of the book\u2019s billowy structure to emphasize its plot. But can a tidy adaptation truly represent this unruly book, with its dramas born of endless uncertainties? Or is the purpose of adaptation something different?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A composer decides what aspects of the narrative can be told through music, while a librettist shapes the story through words that can be thrown out into the air by way of song. An aria reveals a character\u2019s singularity and ambition. Characters sing them to announce what they want and what lengths they must pursue to get it. Each creative turn adds distance from the book.<\/p>\n Certainly, there are advantages to adapting a work as well known as \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d There\u2019s a beginning, middle and end that have met the approval of readers, and that can serve as the ballast for any number of creative reinterpretations. There\u2019s less risk for a production, too. While Melville\u2019s original publisher, Harper and Brothers, considered the book a commercial failure when it came out, few works compare in influence and longevity.<\/p>\n There are also distinct disadvantages to adapting \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d Melville\u2019s language can be difficult. The book has hundreds of pages of exposition. And much of the story\u2019s foreshadowing comes through subtle cues, metaphors and allegories.<\/p>\n The novel, at its heart, is a moral tale about how people deal with what they most fear, how they confront what they despise, and how they make sense of defeat. These are abstract agonies played out through a cast of characters who don\u2019t really evolve. Instead, they press on becoming archetypes of unrealized ambitions. Though Ishmael (called Greenhorn in Scheer and Heggie\u2019s opera) narrates the book, Captain Ahab (the tenor Brandon Jovanovich at the Met) is the star of the opera, an apt, dramatic choice: He is the novel\u2019s most complex and developed character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the novel, Ahab is most tender, though inconsistently, in his interactions with Pip, a 14-year-old cabin boy. In the opera, Pip\u2019s story serves as the turning point that reveals Ahab\u2019s heartlessness. Pip is an innocent, and his na\u00efvet\u00e9 stands in contrast to the sailors\u2019 confidence. His survival is in the hands of the crew, and his presence raises the stakes of the voyage. After a mishap, Pip (sung by<\/a> the soprano Janai Brugger<\/a>) suffers immensely; his resulting fear is a harbinger of troubles to come. Pip\u2019s transformational moment occurs earlier in Scheer\u2019s telling than in the book, a dramaturgical choice that speeds the narrative along, while keeping all the novel\u2019s essential notes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Setting Melville\u2019s thorough and moody prose to music seems a natural. Its lyrical quality invites music that reaches for harmonies: The text is full of open vowel sounds, made when the tongue doesn\u2019t obstruct the flow of air. That can be useful to singers when they harmonize, especially in choral performances.<\/p>\n Melville\u2019s diction can also be oratorical, organized with the driving energy of a sermon. In \u201cThe Lee Shore,\u201d a funerary chapter offered as testimony for a sailor who will be lost to the sea, the narrator weighs the disappointment of a life unfulfilled against the finality of death, \u201cBetter is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a natural lyricism in Melville\u2019s sentences, even as the narration drifts between pessimism and optimism. Often, he attempts to name feelings that reside someplace deep and unseen. He does this by embracing rhythmic patterns used in poetry. Consider the narrator\u2019s need to reckon with \u201ca damp, drizzly November in my soul.\u201d This frequently cited passage in the book\u2019s opening paragraph carries a pattern of stress and intonation.<\/strong><\/p>\n But Melville\u2019s sentences are often lengthy as they wind through multiple ideas. This makes them difficult to sing. Scheer\u2019s libretto is forthright in its characterizations. Its lines, many lifted right from the book, are deceptively simple, written with great control. Some are as short as one or two words. Through the muscular interpretation of the chorus, these monosyllabic utterances \u2014 \u201cAye!,\u201d \u201cDing!\u201d \u2014 become brief, euphonious hollers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Not all adaptations of \u201cMoby Dick\u201d are faithful to the disposition of the novel. The British composer Robert Longden and the librettist Hereward Kaye created a bawdy musical about the staging of \u201cMoby Dick\u201d by the girls of St. Godley\u2019s Academy for Young Ladies. (It opened on the West End in 1992, was widely panned, and closed after just a few months.) The performance artist Laurie Anderson created an avant-garde version of \u201cMoby Dick\u201d in 1999, called \u201cSongs and Stories From Moby Dick.\u201d<\/em> The book is really about \u201cenormous heads,\u201d she says in the show \u2014 specifically Melville\u2019s, which was \u201cfull of theories and secrets and stories,\u201d and the whale\u2019s, which was monstrously large.<\/p>\n Some more conventional adaptations could be interpreted as acts of devotion to Melville\u2019s messiness. Dave Malloy\u2019s 2019 version, performed at A.R.T.<\/a> in Cambridge, Mass., reckoned with the eclectic style of each chapter. It also explores the ways gender and race create their own subplots in the narrative. Another recent adaptation<\/a>, created by the English actor Sebastian Armesto and simple8, a production company that specializes in minimalist productions, told many of the story\u2019s crucial moments through sea shanties.<\/p>\n But perhaps it\u2019s a bad idea to assume that a retelling of \u201cMoby Dick\u201d should do anything other than honor the adapting artists\u2019 commitment to it. At best, their vision will just as discernible as Melville\u2019s is. At worst, one could always pick up the book.<\/p>\n One thing that distinguishes Heggie and Scheer\u2019s adaptation is the frequency with which it has been performed (a distinction that is also rare for a contemporary opera). Before coming to the Met, it was performed by opera companies in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and more. You could argue that it has become canonical, despite being only 15 years old.<\/p>\n Are there too many adaptations of Moby Dick? Probably not. Hard times breed bitter men like Captain Ahab, and there is always another one filled to his hat\u2019s brim with grievances; always another who feels more than justified in his anger; always another who is ready to drown those around him in his misery.<\/p>\n Wendy S. Walters is a professor of nonfiction in the writing program at the School of the Arts at Columbia University.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n