Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
LA Opera's 'Moby-Dick' Is A Powerful And Tempestuous Production
On Grand Avenue, composer Jake Heggie's acclaimed 2010 adaptation of Moby-Dick debuted on Saturday as the second production of the LA Opera season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It is a frequently powerful dramatic rendering of Melville's inexorably assigned novel. Originally commissioned by The Dallas Opera (and previously performed in a handful of other cities), this three-hour production is enhanced by unusually strong visual effects that complement the straightforward narrative of the libretto by Gene Scheer and the tempestuous emotional content of Heggie's score.
The opera's principal strength resides in its distinctively delineated cadre of individual characters occupying close quarters on the Pequod whaling ship under the dubious leadership of Captain Ahab (dramatic tenor Jay Hunter Morris). These include Queequeg (South African bass Musa Ngqungwana), the adventurous tattooed island prince whose bravely plaintive songs of his homeland inspire the ship's Greenhorn (native L.A. tenor Joshua Guerrero) to return there with Queequeg when their sea voyage comes to an end.
Baritone Morgan Smith is especially moving as Starbuck, the ship's mate who considers killing Ahab in order to save the crew from his dangerous obsessions with the titular great white whale. The considerable charm of Jacqueline Echols, the only female singer in the cast, as the cabin boy Pip heightens the foreboding in what anyone even vaguely familiar with the story of Moby-Dick knows is going to come. Morris's Ahab is every bit as maddeningly mad as we would expect from the legendary one-legged sea vigilante, though even his blind rage is also intermittently tempered with clear-eyed self-recognition.
Elaine J. McCarthy's visual projections contextualize Robert Brill's set design by expressively situating the Pequod somewhere out among the starry cosmos as well as at sea. When the great white whale finally arrives, the devastation it wreaks is not merely calamitous, but apocalyptic in its impact.
Support for LAist comes from
The latest offering in the LA Opera company's Contemporary Opera Initiative, Moby-Dick stands resolutely in the grand opera tradition.
Tickets start at $19 for LA Opera's five remaining performances of Moby-Dick through November 28.
As Editor-in-Chief of our newsroom, I’m extremely proud of the work our top-notch journalists are doing here at LAist. We’re doing more hard-hitting watchdog journalism than ever before — powerful reporting on the economy, elections, climate and the homelessness crisis that is making a difference in your lives. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to maintain a paywall-free, independent news source that informs, inspires, and engages everyone.
Simply put, we cannot do this essential work without your help. Federal funding for public media has been clawed back by Congress and that means LAist has lost $3.4 million in federal funding over the next two years. So we’re asking for your help. LAist has been there for you and we’re asking you to be here for us.
We rely on donations from readers like you to stay independent, which keeps our nonprofit newsroom strong and accountable to you.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, press freedom is at the core of keeping our nation free and fair. And as the landscape of free press changes, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust, but the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news from our community.
Please take action today to support your trusted source for local news with a donation that makes sense for your budget.
Thank you for your generous support and believing in independent news.
Chip in now to fund your local journalism
(
LAist
)
Trending on LAist
-
With less to prove than LA, the city is becoming a center of impressive culinary creativity. -
Nearly 470 sections of guardrailing were stolen in the last fiscal year in L.A. and Ventura counties.
-
Monarch butterflies are on a path to extinction, but there is a way to support them — and maybe see them in your own yard — by planting milkweed.
-
With California voters facing a decision on redistricting this November, Surf City is poised to join the brewing battle over Congressional voting districts.
-
The drug dealer, the last of five defendants to plead guilty to federal charges linked to the 'Friends' actor’s death, will face a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
-
The weather’s been a little different lately, with humidity, isolated rain and wind gusts throughout much of Southern California. What’s causing the late-summer bout of gray?
Best of LAist