The New Yorker

“Moby-Dick” sets sail at the Met Opera
February 2024

Among the most notable opening lines in literature is undoubtedly that of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” For just three words, “Call me Ishmael” packs a lot: a name, a metaphor, a friendship offer, an order. But the opera “Moby-Dick” doesn’t begin with that line; it earns it. In Jake Heggie’s score, the words appear instrumentally as an ebbing four-chord motif, but only when the story has finished, when it’s ready to be written down, are they uttered aloud. The character, who goes by Greenhorn in the opera, is “the needle pulling the thread of the audience with him,” Gene Scheer, the librettist, told me. “We’re watching it happen in real time.”

The Met, being the Met, offers a more expansive canvas. Notably, it has height. The opera takes place entirely on the water, forgoing the first sixteen land-bound chapters of its source text. Masts and ropes extend upward and are climbed by sailors, some bodies even ascending out of frame. The Met’s version also has updated technology—the opera uses nautical projections designed by Elaine McCarthy—and an expanded ensemble. “This will be by far the largest presentation of the production,” Heggie told me. “It’s herculean.”