Expect soaring performances
Jeanine Tesori’s innovative new opera, “Grounded” will be streamed live from the Met Opera stage in New York to the Newport Performing Arts Center this Saturday, Oct. 19.
Commissioned through the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, “Grounded” depicts one woman’s journey from a successful F-16 combat pilot in the United States Air Force to a Reaper drone operator in the Nevada desert. A thrilling, fast-paced adaptation of an award-winning play by George Brant, who also wrote the libretto, the opera explores the psychological tolls of modern warfare and the roles of women in the armed forces and society at large.
Directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, the opera features Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, in the tour-de-force role of Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she adjusts to this new way of doing battle, she struggles under the pressure of being the perfect soldier, wife and mother.
Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, leading a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who sweeps Jess off her feet. Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.
Tesori, the most prolific female composer in American theater history, is widely known for Tony Award-winning musicals “Kimberly Akimbo” and” Fun Home,” as well as the opera “Blue,” which garnered the Music Critics Association Award for Best New Opera. Her “Grounded” score moves freely among the realistic, psychic and technological aspects of the drama, with the role of Jess living vibrantly in all these dimensions.
Jess’s music is dreamy and somewhat disembodied while she sings about the experience of flying her jet, conversational in her early interactions with the Commander and lush and flirtatious in her romance with Eric. As her mental health degrades, detached from Eric and her world, Jess’s character is bifurcated with the introduction of the soprano role “Also Jess,” a kind of alter ego that helps process the trauma of her job. The splitting of Jess’s psyche also allows her to sing moving duets with “herself.”
The opera is sung in English, and audiences should take note that it contains adult language and war sequences.
The production begins at 10 am, with a run time of approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes with one intermission. Tickets range from $12 to $28. The Newport Performing Arts Center is located at 777 W Olive Street. For more information, go to coastarts.org or call 541-265-2787.