Tesori’s “Grounded” scores a dark triumph in Met season opener
“If Odysseus came home every day,” sings fighter pilot Jess to her husband in Jeanine Tesori’s unsettling opera Grounded, which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2024-25 season Monday night, “it would be a very different book.”
Different, indeed. As different as every war is from the last one, as humans think up ever more diabolical ways to kill each other. For now at least, that means the video-arcade air war, where a drone operator in a La-Z-Boy in a trailer in Nevada can bomb people half a world away, and (as Jess’s Commander triumphantly declares) “the threat of death has been removed.”
Death to the pilot’s body, perhaps. But the spiritual malaise of the workaday death-dealer, and by implication of the society she is supposed to be defending, are the disturbing themes that haunt the libretto by George Brant (based on his play) and Tesori’s economical yet gripping score.
As Jess, the former ace F-16 pilot now assigned to the “Chair Force” by day and mommy duty by night, mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo bravely carried this opera’s considerable psychological and philosophical burdens, strongly inhabiting a role whose challenges had more to do with emotional grounding (so to speak) than with vocal display.
Her personal odyssey, from ecstatic air warrior in the opening number “The Blue”—the opera’s only overt show-stopper, delivered in a ceaseless prowl and lifting her warm voice to a ringing high A—to court-martialed prisoner who has crashed her plane rather than kill a child, seemed to carry with it all the ironies and ambiguities of modern life. And lest we miss the point, Act II of this concise opera—a mere two hours plus intermission–began with a trip to a shopping mall.
But settling down with the handsome ranch hand Eric (lyric tenor Ben Bliss in a heartfelt, unmannered characterization) and their five-year-old daughter Sam (the charming Lucy LoBue) proved so difficult for Jess that her role split into two singers, mezzo D’Angelo as the working mom and soprano Ellie Dehn as Also Jess, her high-flying alter ego.
Dehn’s blue-lit perch high in Mimi Lien’s two-tiered set, and her robust voice with flecks of coloratura, as she presided over the scene “I Am Above Me,” offered just a touch of Queen-of-the-Night menace and the showiest singing in an otherwise unshowy score.
Nothing happens in the military without orders, and Jess’s came from bass-baritone Greer Grimsley as a ramrod-straight yet sympathetic Commander, steering his young ace through the mysteries of couch warfare.
This new world makes for strange couchfellows, so the flight-suited, by-the-book pilot found herself paired with a slovenly teenage arcade rat known only as Sensor, whose qualifications consist of a sharp eye for targets on the blurry screen. Kyle Miller, in his Met debut, portrayed this savant sidekick with loosey-goosey body language and a firm, clear baritone.
Ably moving the story along were Earle Patriarco as a pilot who picks a fight with Eric in a bar and Met debutant Timothy Murray as the Seatwarmer who trades 12-hour shifts in the pilot’s chair with Jess.
And since no present-day Top Gun is complete without a committee, Jess’s headset was abuzz with the often-chaotic instructions of her Kill Chain, that is, the Mission Coordinator, Ground Control, Joint Terminal Attack Controller, Safety Observer (!), and Judge Advocate General, voiced offstage by, respectively, Christopher Bozeka, Thomas Capobianco, Paul Corona, Christopher Job, and Matthew Anchel.
The male chorus, two dozen strong and prepared by the Met’s newly appointed chorus director Tilman Michael, populated scenes in the air base, the bar and the mall and, most memorably, donned ghostly flight suits as the Drone Squadron that haunted Jess’s disordered mind in Act II. Choreographer David Neumann, debuting with the Met, designed their spare, drill-like movements.
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin led a well-paced, edge-of-your-recliner performance that delivered its Puccinian surges sparingly but effectively, more often dwindling to an airy texture of woodwinds or even a solo flute in dialogue with D’Angelo’s Jess.
Michael Mayer’s production surrounded the cast with splashes of color or video “snow” or geometrical patterns suggestive of, but not depicting outright, video game imagery and grainy air-war footage. Co-projection designers Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras bathed the broad planes of Lien’s set in sky blue, starry midnight blue, and bursts of red or blinding white as the drama demanded, subtly coordinated with sound designer Palmer Hefferan’s sonic effects.
The photo-realism of Tom Broecker’s costumes, from rancher Eric’s untucked plaid shirt to the Commander’s crisp uniform, contrasted meaningfully with the rest of the production’s subjective, even expressionistic design, throwing each character’s humanity into relief.
Lighting designer Kevin Adams—the only member of the design team not making a Met debut with this production—evoked the smoky depths of the pilot bar and the cozy warmth of Jess and Eric’s home, but also the psychological stress of the couch-kill in flickering bars of white light, as if the scene itself were viewed through video static.
Projecting the singer’s image vastly enlarged in live video—a regrettable trend in opera production apparently borrowed from pop concerts—was used here artfully and sparingly to enhance the drama’s most intense moments.
Intensity was in fact the watchword of this fast-paced co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and the Washington National Opera, which premiered in the latter city last October. From the crackling irony and military profanity of Brant’s dialogue to the sharp mood etching of Tesori’s score, Grounded proved a worthy successor to Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Dead Man Walking as powerful—and indelibly American—statements to open a Met season.
Grounded runs through October 19. metopera.org
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