Moby-Dick • Press Coverage
Critical Acclaim
“Mr. Heggie's opera was an undeniable success: The end of its maiden voyage was greeted with a sustained, rousing ovation, with shredded programs fluttering down from the highest seating level. The strongest response was reserved for Mr. Heggie and Mr. Scheer, received at the end with a triumphal roar.”
The New York Times
“The hit of the season… A colorful, singable score that has its own undeniable unity and through-line. In an operatic landscape crowded with various noteworthy reinventions of the wheel that have not managed to travel very far, Moby-Dick is eminently driveable. This is an opera that works dramatically, expresses itself in traditional musical terms with the emotional surges and clear gestures of a bygone operatic world yet with a 21st-century air and generally captivates its audience. Moby-Dick is that rare bird: a contemporary grand opera that delivers on a grand-opera scale.”
The Washington Post
“Moby-Dick is a whale of a hit for composer Jake Heggie. An achingly beautiful, magnificently sung and gorgeously staged world premiere, the highlight of the Dallas Opera's first season at the sparkling new Winspear Opera House. The audience responded with an eight-minute standing ovation. Heggie is a rarity, an accessible composer whose melodic lines and sense of drama are aimed at audiences rather than academics. With librettist Gene Scheer, he has transformed Melville's sprawling novel into an active stage work.”
Associated Press
“Moby-Dick, the opera, is a triumph. Stunningly staged and sung, it captures the elemental forces of the sea and Captain Ahab's obsession with the great white whale that has maimed him. Scheer seamlessly tunes his own prose and poetry to Melville's. Heggie composes vocal lines that make sense vocally and illumine words and emotions.”
The Dallas Morning News
“A massive artistic accomplishment…”
WFAA-T
“Melville's Moby-Dick has been called the Great American Novel. Jake Heggie's telling of the story is certainly a great American opera… a vibrant cast and Heggie's sumptuous, noble score combined on May 5 for an exhilarating evening of music and theatre.”
Opera Now
“Probably one of the most successful new operas to reach the stage in the past quarter century.”
The Toronto Star
“Moby-Dick turned out to be one of the most satisfying new operas I've seen premiered… The opening-night crowd in Dallas broke into spontaneous applause three times during the first half, and screamed and yelled its approval at the curtain calls.”
The Washington Post
“The score is studded with vivid scenes in many modes. Ribbons of silken melody, played by solo winds and reeds, ripple high above, like wayward breezes. Pizzicati conjure up pinpricks of starlight on the waves.”
Beyond Criticism
“A sumptuous and stirring operatic treatment of the Melville classic and a vibrant, compelling piece of musical theater… Easily Heggie's finest creation since Dead Man Walking first put him on the map a decade ago. A powerhouse display of grandeur and specificity… Moby-Dick boasts Heggie’s richest and most expressively assured score to date. The result is a masterpiece of clarity and intensity, with a score that is at once thematically compact and richly inventive.
San Francisco Chronicle
“A new chapter in opera history…”
D Magazine
“It's glorious and it's gripping; it's grand — and it's good! …A work of quality that should garner itself an immediate place in the repertory of opera houses around the world. The Dallas Opera Orchestra in giving birth to what is obviously a modern masterpiece of music theater.”
Opera Today
“I believe that Moby-Dick quite possibly will become the most popular opera written so far during our young century.”
Opera Warhorses
“It reveals a composer whose depth and sophistication is growing with time, and the music world is the better for it.
Fort Worth Renaissance
“The future of opera.”
City Walk Talk
“Moby-Dick is a large, epically proportioned work … The music is flawlessly beautiful, like a jewel. It is intensely lyrical, powerfully moody and superbly well paced. There are no disjunctures of style or breaks in dramatic flow; instead, Heggie has created a giant symphonic poem through which he threads the voices majestically and gloriously.”
The Australian
“Moby-Dick is a triumph! A modern masterpiece.”
Indaily
“If the prolonged cheers and standing ovation of the opening-night audience are any indications, the outlook for Jake Heggie’s latest opera Moby Dick is smooth sailing. A powerful libretto, a restless yet not alienating score, and committed vocal performances in what may turn out to be only slightly less rare than a white whale — a truly popular, post-Puccini opera. Heggie is a master of the vocal line and of text-setting. He has an ear for melody, a tonally based harmonic sense, and is adept at matching the ebb and flow of the written drama with corresponding musical devices.”
San Francisco Classical Voice
“An astounding journey. The Great American Novel has become a grand new opera.”
The Advertiser
“The seamless combination of projections, the physical set and live action is astounding, seeming to blend opera with theatre, circus, cinema and visual art into a multimedia extravaganza. It has to be seen to be believed.”
Glam Adelaide
“As striking as the vocal richness is, one was unprepared for the scale and ingenuity of Heggie’s orchestral writing. The restless, surging symphonic backdrop is brilliantly scored and deftly avoids the stop-start trap of stand-alone moments of so many contemporary operas. Indeed, the ceaseless flow and momentum of the opera, both musically and dramatically, is one of its most singular qualities. A deft and masterful adaptation of Melville’s behemoth novel.”
The Classical Review