The Metropolitan Opera has announced a new cast change for “Moby Dick” on March 15, 2025. The company said that Alex Boyer will sing the role of Captain Ahab, replacing Brandon Jovanovich. Boyer previously made his Met debut on March 11, 2025 also replacing Jovanovich in “Moby Dick.” The tenor has performed at the West Edge Opera, San Francisco Opera, San {…}
An egomaniac goes on an obsessive revenge tour to heal his bruised ego, in the process destroying himself and the entire community that he is supposed to lead and protect. In a way, “Moby Dick” is a perfect story for our times, especially given what has transpired in the past six weeks. It also connects perfectly with an incident that {…}
The Metropolitan Opera has announced a cast change for the opening performance of “Moby Dick.” The company revealed that Peter Mattei has withdrawn due to illness. In his stead, the role of Starbuck will be sung by Thomas Glass, who previously won the Grand Finals of the National Council Auditions in 2019, singing Starbuck’s aria “Captain Ahab? I must speak {…}
The year is at an end. But a new year brings new opera experiences and here at OperaWire, we are pumped for the potential of numerous performances. Here are the 10 productions we are most excited for in the first half of the 2025, in alphabetical order (and each company is limited to a single production on the list). Die {…}
The Metropolitan Opera is set to present four contemporary operas during the 2024-25 season. In a new article by The New York Times, the company revealed that it will present “Grounded” about the toll of drone warfare by Jeanine Tesori and George Brant to open the season in September. The season will also see John Adams’ latest opera “Antony and {…}
(Photo Credits: Karen Almon/Metropolitan Opera) Throughout this new series, we will be looking at the history of American opera, beginning in the 2000s through to the present, through revisiting certain iconic works of the past two decades and OperaWire’s coverage of them throughout the 21st century. In part one, we looked at the developments of the 2000s. In part two, {…}
The Metropolitan Opera is set to present Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s “Moby Dick” during the 2024-25 season. The Heggie work is set to arrive one season after the company performed Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s “Dead Man Walking” for its opening night of the 2023-24 season. The Met made the announcement on its website while promoting “Dead Man Walking.” “Moby {…}
Jake Heggie is one of the significant opera composers of the 21st century. Born on March 31, 1961, Heggie grew up in Columbus, Ohio and started studying the piano at age seven. After his father’s suicide in 1972, Heggie began writing music and his family relocated to the San Francisco Bay area. He studied at the UCLA for both his {…}
“Moby Dick” wasn’t a hit in Melville’s day. Instead, the author remained a customs officer until his death, his literary genius living mostly underground and his epic masterpiece under wraps until the 20thcentury, when it was “discovered.” Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s opera “Moby Dick” has conversely sustained more success from the outset and this continued as their {…}
We spend a lot of time on this site talking about dead composers. And for good reason. Opera wouldn’t exist today if it wasn’t for those great artists of the past. But it’s also important sometimes to shine a spotlight on the artists making headway in today’s conservative opera culture. I call it conservative because despite having more talent in {…}
It’s amazing what a ripping good yarn enhanced by instantly recognizable themes can do for an audience. American composer Jake Heggie’s opera, “Moby Dick,” now being performed by the Pittsburgh Opera, is in many ways a return to that fundamental principle for operatic success: create characters audiences care about, and endow them with memorable motifs to better manipulate the viewers’ {…}