Observer

Spring Preview: Fight Doom and Gloom as Dance and Opera Speak Truth to Power
February 2024

Dark times, friends. If it’s not deadly weather, it’s the politics of cruelty, or online brainrot, or a dozen other catastrophes. Who can focus on getting tickets to this dance concert or that opera premiere? But if you’re reading this preview, you know, culture matters. You’ll find many a work below whose wisdom will outlast the petty tyrants of today.

Some material only works as opera. Betty Boop? Yeah, that’s a musical—in fact, coming to Broadway soon. But Herman Melville’s 1851 doorstop about a demented sea captain endangering the lives of his crew in an insane mission to catch a deadly whale? Pure opera, baby. The acclaimed adaptation by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer comes to the Metropolitan Opera 15 years after its world premiere in Dallas. Tenor Brandon Jovanovich straps on the peg to play Ahab.