Moby Dick

Moby Dick is Peter Westergaard’s fifth opera which, coupled with the fact that he also directed the Princeton University Opera Theatre during his more than 20 year career there, perhaps begins to account for his mastery of the idiom. Granted, Westergaard has picked himself a doozy of a subject for operatic treatment. There’s just something about the dark mist that surrounds every aspect of the tale, physically and psychologically, that makes it particularly appropriate for such exploration. And Westergaard exploits it to full advantage musically. The vocal performances turned in by this all-male cast and the orchestration eloquently capture the ambience of the plot without sacrificing the sophistication of the music. (Plus, he lets his characters talk-sing some of the material which adds welcome additional textures). This is not exactly leave-the-theatre-humming scoring, but still it seems to connect more primally than you might first expect before listening. What’s halfway between Sondheim and Wuorinen? Yeah, right about there.

—MS