How and why I created the opera

While getting my M.A. in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, I studied Melville’s writing with Professor Hennig Cohen, a Melville authority. Although I had read Moby-Dick as a child I did not really appreciate its deeper significance at the time. Since as a composer I specialize in large orchestral works, the creation of an opera was something which appealed to me, the problem being that I was not a big opera fan myself, but rather a concert pianist and composer of instrumental works and songs. In fact, I disliked many things about the way operas were performed: the static position of the singers, their often overblown personalities and voices, the fixed sets, and the snobbish attitude of a wealthy elite. Since that time many things have changed, and opera is in the process of being given back to and adopted by the people, the wider audience of music lovers. However, I wanted my opera to be a music drama, or music theater, in that it was the action of the work, the motivations of the characters, and above all the great universality of Moby-Dick and its important message for our time which motivated me in writing it. In creating the libretto as I composed the music, I dug every day into Melville’s text and like a miner I extracted the gold which was there, that is, the rhythmic verse which was encapsulated in his mighty prose:
“The whole act’s immutably decreed,
It was rehearsed by you and me,
A billion years before the ocean rolled,
Fool, I am the Fate’s lieutenant,
I act under orders.
See that thou obeyest mine.”
This comes to mind as one typical example of finding text suitable for such a musical setting. It should be emphasized that the music is put in service of the drama, and not the other way around. Everything in the performance seeks to develop true theater, rather than an old-fashioned static and exaggerated, unrealistic opera. I use the word opera to describe the work, but in fact it is a piece of music theater. The singers must know how to act and how to move in a realistic and compelling fashion. In this respect Call Me Ishmael is a revolutionary work which aims to change the way opera is written and performed. It is very much in the tradition of two previous works of music theater which have inspired me greatly: Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Bernstein’s West Side Story.

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