Weathering the November in my Soul

The San Francisco opera has recently presented the opera Moby Dick, by Jake Heggie, and PBS kindly offered free streaming.  It was a snowy drear November Sunday, so I watched it.  I've never actually read the book, nor do I intend to, but it seems good opera fodder, being the tale of an essentially stupid quest spearheaded by a selfish egotist and almost everyone dies.  Actually, because of that, I had high hopes for it being the next (or, in my opinion, first) great American opera.  After watching it, well, it's really no worse than any other American opera.  Okay, so the composer does that annoying thing where he acts like structure just isn't important, and pleasing harmonies and cadences are just so last century, so the music ends up sounding like one long discordant recitative.  He does, however, discover motifs (or maybe themes, I'm not really clear on the difference) near the end of the first act.  Three of them!  Only fancy! With chord resolution, even!

What kept me watching was the incredibly wonderful staging of the SF opera, which magnificence foiled even the film crew, who were doing that thing where they try to zoom in on only parts of the opera at any given time, when a stage production is designed to be seen as a whole and from a distance.  Seriously, the staging was that amazing.  Normally the stage was just a ship's deck, but with clever use of lights and probably a projector the stage could become awash with waves while white light outlines of boats took shape and moved around the back of the stage.  The singers would perch on seats on the back wall itself while the boats took shape around them, creating a glorious illusion.  When the boats broke apart, the singers, tumbled down dramatically from their perches.   The cabin boy, after being briefly lost at sea (why was the cabin boy on a whale boat in the first place?), swims across a sea of blue light on wires. Wonderful!  When a whale was being rendered, a giant whale shape hung over the stage against a fiery moving backdrop (projection?) like a door to hell.  My only disappointment in the staging was that Moby Dick never actually shows up more than as a giant projected eye, which is kind of like having The Ring without a dragon onstage.

Plotwise it's what I expected.  Our megalomaniac tenor captain is fierce with a complete disregard for human life and a tendency to wave muskets at his almost mutinous first mate, Starbuck, who understandably thinks this whole white whale obsession is dangerous and stupid.   Greenhorn/Ishmael is kind of stupid and inexperienced.  Queegueg has a tendency toward chanting and sprinkling glitter about.  The crew engage are largely an indistinguishable mass, but sometimes they brawl over racial tensions.  Pip the cabin boy appears to be everyone's favorite with lots of drollery and a tambourine, though he incomprehensibly goes insane after his brief experience overboard.  And of course, no one gets out alive except for Greenhorn/Ishmael on his coffin.

There's an emphasis on religion throughout, but as unfocused as the music, which may be in itself a point.  The unfocused emphasis, that is, I really hope the music is not supposed to make a point.  Greenhorn/Ishmael starts out complaining about Abrahamic religions in response to Queequeg's chanting, telling him that Lents and Ramadans are pointless and keeping him (Greenhorn/Ishmael) awake.  Since Queequeg is identified as a pagan, which in this case seems to mean non-Abrahamic religion, this is a little odd.  Whatever.  After Queequeg rescues Pip from the ocean, Greenhorn/Ishmael decides to convert to his "pagan" friend's religion.  Starbuck, meanwhile, is dogmatically insisting on what things the Christian God does or does not approve of, which, conveniently, all line up with what Starbuck does or does not approve of. Ahab baptizes a harpoon in the name of Satan (who has started caring about whales?  Did I miss something theologically?) but then almost discovers humanism when he looks at Starbuck and says looking into the eyes of a man is better than gazing upon God.

Oddly, everyone describes whales as very dangerous, or in Ahab's case, the terrors of the deep.  Since the whales are only dangerous to those who are provoking them by sticking harpoons in them in order to render their fat and make money, this seems disingenuous.   I'm sympathetic to people who need to make money, but not to people who just make war on whales.  Seriously, Moby is described as killing lots of people but all of these people were trying to kill him first.

Moby Dick is a decent enough way to spend a dreary snowy day, but it's not music that I will remember or want to hear again.  Try again, American composers.