American composer Jake Heggie (b. 1961) began his musical studies at the age of five like many composers featured in our Operapaedia articles, eventually continuing his studies at UCLA under pianist Johana Harris. While working on staff in the public relations department at San Francisco Opera he came under the radar of General Director Lotfi Mansouri as a composer and was appointed composer-in-residence at SFO in 1998 where his first opera, Dead Man Walking, was produced in 2000. The libretto, based on a memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, was written by playwright Terrence McNally (Master Class, The Lisbon Traviata, Love! Valour! Compassion!). Dead Man Walking has had more than 15 international productions and has led to more commissions, including The End of the Affair (2004, Houston Grand Opera, libretto by the composer and Leonard Foglia after Graham Greene), At the Statue of Venus (2005, Opera Colorado, libretto by Terrence McNally), To Hell and Back (2006, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, libretto by Gene Scheer) and Last Acts (2008, Houston Grand Opera, libretto by Gene Scheer after a play by McNally; the opera is now known as Three Decembers).
The idea for an opera based on the epic seafaring novel by Herman Melville originally came from McNally, who had dreamed of such a work for years. But due to a recurrence of lung cancer the playwright found it necessary, regretfully and painfully, to bow out of the work and Heggie turned to one of his other writing partners, Gene Scheer, to continue. Scheer read the book twice over before agreeing to tackle the project, a daunting one, which involved taking an 850 page book with numerous themes and hammering it down into a libretto for an opera in two acts. It also meant, for Heggie, beginning from scratch, as it needed to be "Gene's piece". Stage director Leonard Foglia was also involved very early on, as was Patrick Summers, the conductor.
From the beginning of the composer's work with Scheer they both understood that the opera needed to focus on the character of Ahab, captain of the Pequod, and his obsession to control his destiny, nature, and the universe around him. Over a year was spent on the writing of the libretto, coming up with an 'architecture' or structure for the opera with the close collaboration of Foglia as a dramaturge. Choosing to take the first line of the novel ("Call me Ishmael") and make it the last line of the libretto gave them the freedom to re-cast the structure of the rambling story (which includes multiple themes, viewpoints of many different characters and seemingly endless but fascinating events, large and small) into something more worthy of the stage. As the creators of the work acknowledge, Melville scholars and avid readers of the book may demure, but the spirit of the author's intent is most definitely involved, even to the point of using much of Melville's own language.
Heggie struggled to find the right musical language for the score, asking himself as a composer what musical 'world' or sonic environment would best satisfy to tell the story of Ahab for an audience over the lapse of a three-hour stage work. He noted that certain elements were de rigueur, i.e. the 'sounds' of wind, the sea, a storm, waves. But he also acknowledged the percussive effects of Ahab's walking late at night on the deck of the Pequod, distinguished by his peg leg, a crude prosthesis made from the jawbone of a whale replacing the extremity lost to Moby-Dick. He also referred to the sound whalers of the nineteenth century heard when passing quietly through a pod of whales, the unusual clicking sound (which marine biologists have now identified as echolocation) that reminded them of something hammering against the hull of the ship.
The opera opened at Dallas Opera, the lead partner in a consortium of opera companies (including San Diego Opera) responsible for the production, on April 30, 2010 with tenor Ben Heppner in the role of Ahab, tenor Stephen Costello as Greenhorn (Ishmael), baritone Morgan Smith as Starbuck, bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu as Queequeg and soprano Talise Trevigne as Pip, with Patrick Summers conducting the Dallas Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
The author acknowledges Jerome Weeks' News and Features article, "Audio Files: A Conversation with Moby-Dick Composer Jake Heggie", March 17, 2009, for information gleaned from a conversation between the composer and representatives of news organizations in and around Dallas, Texas.