Grounded | |
---|---|
Opera by Jeanine Tesori | |
Librettist | George Brant |
Language | English |
Based on | Grounded (a play by George Brant) |
Premiere |
Grounded is an English-language opera in two acts with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by George Brant. The libretto is adapted from Brant's play of the same name. The opera features a pilot, Jess, and shows her struggle to adapt to drone warfare. The opera premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2023 to mixed reviews. Emily D'Angelo was praised for her role as the lead character, and Tesori's score was generally well received. The way in which the opera dealt with the theme of drone warfare was generally criticized in by reviewers, who suggested it did not have a clear anti-war theme.
The opera originated as a stage play by George Brant. The play, also called Grounded, was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013, [1] and in New York in 2014. The New York performance starred Anne Hathaway. The play is a one-woman show in which the character is unnamed. [2] Paul Cremo of the Metropolitan Opera attended the New York performance of the play, and shortly afterwards emailed Brant, saying "he heard an aria pulsing throughout it" and thought it could be produced as an opera. [3] When Grounded was commissioned as an opera in 2018, Tesori became one of the first two women (along with Missy Mazzoli) to be commissioned to write a new opera by the Metropolitan Opera. [4] Brant was asked to adapt his play into the libretto for the opera, though he had not worked on an opera before. [3] Tesori's previous operas include her 2019 work Blue . Outside of operas, she is an experienced composer of musicals, with her work including Shrek the Musical . [5]
On the announcement of the production by Washington National Opera, the opera's 'presenting sponsor' was listed as General Dynamics, an aerospace and defence corporation. The opera's fictional lead character is said to have a background as an F-16 pilot, an aircraft developed by General Dynamics. After extensive criticism, Washington National Opera changed the webpage to list General Dynamics as a 'season sponsor', and also rewrote the opera's promotional text. [6] Despite this, General Dynamics were thanked alongside other sponsors on stage before the premiere performance at the Kennedy Center. [7]
Role | Voice type | Premiere cast – October 28, 2023 Conductor: Daniela Candillari [8] |
---|---|---|
Jess | mezzo-soprano | Emily D'Angelo |
Eric | tenor | Joseph Dennis |
Commander | bass | Morris Robinson |
Trainer | tenor | Frederick Ballentine |
Sensor | baritone | Kyle Miller |
Also Jess | soprano | Teresa Perrotta |
Sam | child's voice | Willa Cook |
Kill Chain: Mission Coordinator | tenor | Michael Butler |
Kill Chain: Ground Control | tenor | Joshua Dennis |
Kill Chain: Joint Terminal Attack Controller | baritone | Rob McGinness |
Kill Chain: Safety Observer | baritone | Jonathan Patton |
Kill Chain: Judge Advocate General | bass | Sergio Martínez |
The opera features the story of an American F-16 pilot who is grounded due to pregnancy after a brief relationship while on leave with a rancher from Wyoming. During her grounding, she controls Reaper drones from a base near Las Vegas, attacking distant targets. As a result of the drone warfare, her mental health suffers, and she is imprisoned after intentionally crashing a drone. [8]
Jess, a F-16 fighter pilot in the United States Air Force, is both an accomplished pilot and also the only woman in her squadron. While on leave from combat in Iraq, she meets the rancher Eric. They sleep together and fall in love before Jess returns to duty – and discovers she is pregnant.
Jess can either keep the baby or keep flying. Despite appeals from her Commander that she is invaluable to the squadron, she accepts the status DNIF, or "Duty Not Including Flying", and she and Eric soon welcome their daughter, Sam.
Eight years pass. Longing for the sky, Jess returns to her Commander, who, instead of sending her back to her beloved F-16, assigns her to pilot drones remotely, from a trailer near Las Vegas. Jess protests. But the Commander counters that since operators work 12-hour shifts and return to their families each night, Jess will get "war with all the benefits of home". She, Eric and Sam move to Las Vegas.
In the trailer, Jess adjusts to her new team: the Sensor, a teenage, former gaming champion who controls the drone's cameras; the Kill Chain, a chain of command that, via headset, assigns missions and approves strikes; and two stoic Observers. Initial tedium gives way to unexpected adrenaline rushes as Jess launches strikes. Meanwhile, Eric gets a job as a blackjack dealer. Jess begins encountering an eerie Drone Squadron and a second, dissociated version of herself.
Jess and Sam are in the mall, surrounded by the free-sample-wielding Mall Squadron. In the dressing room, Jess fixates on who might be watching them through the mirror – and suddenly she is back in the trailer, only this time, her screen shows dying American soldiers. Noting her mounting distress, Eric encourages her to "clap off the game", a gesture he uses at the casino when clocking out.
On the one-year anniversary of Jess' arrival in the trailer, the Commander assigns her a high-profile mission: track the car suspected to hold target number two on the kill list, and once he steps out and is identified, strike. Jess' relentless pursuit of her target and the intense strain of the mission blur the already faint lines between war and her personal life; she believes a sleeping Sam to be dead, refuses to take off her flight suit after work, and mentally splits into herself and a split personality named "Also Jess" during sex with Eric.
Finally, Jess tracks her target to his home – but he does not leave the car. As he drives off, a girl runs from the house, and the target springs from his car, waving her away: a positive identification. The Kill Chain orders the strike. But Jess, seeing Sam in the girl's place, intentionally crashes a Reaper drone. She is prosecuted and imprisoned after a court martial.
The opera premiered at the Kennedy Center on October 28, 2023, in a co-production of Washington National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. [9] Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times praised Emily D'Angelo in the lead role as the pilot Jess as "perfectly cast", though he also wrote there was a lack of chemistry between her and her onstage husband Eric, performed by an "affable" Joseph Dennis. Woolfe went on to compare the opera unfavourably with Tesori's previous opera, Blue. He also disagreed with Peter Gelb's assertion that Grounded is "an antiwar opera", instead stating "the piece seems to say that war is OK; there are just better and worse — more and less authentic — ways of waging it." [7]
In a review for the Washington Post , Michael Brodeur praised the "surprising delicacy and daring" of Tesori's score and the individual performances of the singers, but criticized elements of the adaption of Brant's play. He questioned the expansion of the cast, feeling that other than the central character, "everyone feels optional". Brodeur too did not feel that Grounded could be called an anti-war opera, stating that for periods of the opera, representations of the drones "border on garish advertisement". He also felt that the character Jess was weaker than the Pilot of the original play. Brodeur stated that the production failed to humanize the victims of drone warfare "until the last possible moment" and overall, the opera felt "like a miss". [10]
Writing in the Washington Classical Review, Charles T. Downey called Tesori's music "disappointingly thin and lackluster", with the exception of the male chorus. Downey praised Emily D'Angelo as "radiant", and also drew positive attention to Willa Cook as Jess's young daughter Sam. He described Morris Robinson as "stentorian" in his performance as the Commander. Deriding the fact that the opera contains an aria about the making of a PowerPoint presentation, Downey stated that both acts "dragged". [11]
Kate Wingfield was more positive in her four-star review for Metro Weekly , stating that, despite issues with the adaption and libretto, "the production is driven by a wonderfully cohesive cast". Wingfield drew out Morris Robinson for special praise as an "utterly convincing presence". [12]
In a review for BroadwayWorld, David Friscic was appreciative of Tesori's music, calling it "alternately sweeping, plaintive, elegiac, whimsical, satiric, mocking, poetic or emphatic". Friscic praised the sensitivity of Daniela Candillari as conductor, and was complimentary of the support cast, staging, and lighting. Friscic reserved the highest praise for lead Emily D'Angelo, referring to her "breathtaking vocal control and tone". His assessment of the opera overall was as "ground-breaking" though he stated that the audience's reaction would be "a matter of taste and aesthetics". [13]
Space warfare is combat in which one or more belligerents are situated in outer space. The scope of space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth; space-to-space warfare, such as satellites attacking satellites; and space-to-ground warfare, such as satellites attacking Earth-based targets. Space warfare in fiction is thus sub-genre and theme of science fiction, where it is portrayed with a range of realism and plausibility. In the real world, international treaties are in place that attempt to regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of space weapon systems, especially nuclear weapons.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Mary Zimmerman is an American theatre and opera director and playwright from Nebraska. She is an ensemble member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and also serves as the Jaharis Family Foundation Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
The Handmaid's Tale is a 1998 opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders, setting a libretto by Paul Bentley based on the novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. It has a prologue, a prelude, two acts and an epilogue; there is a build-up in each act leading to a big scene. The work premiered in Copenhagen in 2000 and has since been produced in London, Toronto and elsewhere. Bentley's libretto converts a first-person novel into a third-person opera by means of framing devices. The action takes place in a 22nd-century United States taken over by a right-wing theocracy named Gilead; it starts with a newsreel-like collage: the narrative first frame.
Siberia is an opera in three acts by Umberto Giordano from a libretto by Luigi Illica. It premiered on 19 December 1903 at La Scala in Milan. There is no direct source for the plot of Siberia and it is quite possible that this is an original work by Illica. It was suggested at the New York premiere in 1908 that it was based on Leo Tolstoy's 1899 novel Resurrection or one of the novels within it.
Melba is a 1953 musical biopic drama film of the life of Australian-born soprano Nellie Melba, written by Harry Kurnitz and directed by Lewis Milestone for Horizon Pictures, marking the film debut of the Metropolitan Opera's Patrice Munsel.
Two Boys is an opera in two acts by American composer Nico Muhly, with an English-language libretto by American playwright Craig Lucas. The opera's story is based on real events in Manchester, England, in 2001 as described in a 2005 Vanity Fair article titled "You Want Me 2 Kill Him?"
Drone warfare is a form of aerial warfare or marine warfare using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland are known to have manufactured operational UCAVs as of 2019.
Gregory Spears is an American composer of instrumental and operatic works that blend aspects of romanticism, minimalism, and early music. Among his best known works are the operas Fellow Travelers and Paul's Case, as well as his Requiem.
George Brant is an American playwright. Born in Park Ridge, Illinois, he is the author of several award-winning plays, most notably Grounded.
Blue is an opera in two acts with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by Tazewell Thompson. It premiered at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2019 and received the Music Critics Association of North America 2020 Award for Best New Opera.
Eurydice is an opera composed by Matthew Aucoin with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl based on her 2003 play of the same name, a retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. It had its premiere at the Los Angeles Opera on February 1, 2020, with Aucoin conducting. It had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on November 23, 2021.
J’Nai Bridges is a two time Grammy-Award winning American mezzo-soprano. She is a winner of the Marian Anderson Award and has performed for the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, and San Francisco Opera. BET has described her as The Beyoncé of opera.
Aerial warfare in the Russian invasion of Ukraine began at dawn of 24 February 2022, with infantry divisions and armored and air support in Eastern Ukraine, and dozens of missile attacks across Ukraine. The first fighting took place in Luhansk Oblast near the village of Milove on the border with Russia at 3:40 am Kyiv time. The main infantry and tank attacks were launched in four spearhead incursions, creating a northern front launched towards Kyiv, a southern front originating in Crimea, a south-eastern front launched at the cities of Luhansk and Donbas, and an eastern front. Dozens of missile strikes across Ukraine also reached as far west as Lviv. Drones have also been a critical part of the invasion, particularly in regards to combined arms warfare. Drones have additionally been employed by Russia in striking Ukrainian critical infrastructure, and have been used by Ukraine to strike military infrastructure in Russian territory.
Collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) is a US program for unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) that is considered broadly equivalent to a loyal wingman. CCAs are intended to operate in collaborative teams with the next generation of manned combat aircraft, including sixth-generation fighters and bombers such as the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. Unlike the conventional UCAVs, the CCA incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), denoted an "autonomy package", increasing its survivability on the battlefield. It is still expected to cost much less than a manned aircraft with similar capabilities. The US Air Force plans to spend more than $6 billion on its CCA programs from 2023 to 2028. The success of the CCA program may lessen the need for additional manned squadrons.
Woman at Point Zero is an English and Arabic language multimedia opera in one act, with music by British composer Bushra El-Turk and libretto by South African writer Stacy Hardy. It is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Nawal El Saadawi.
Castor and Patience is an opera composed by Gregory Spears to a libretto by Tracy K. Smith, commissioned by Cincinnati Opera for its 100th anniversary season and received its world premiere there in July 2022. The opera was developed by Opera Fusion: New Works, a collaboration between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music which focuses on the creation of new American operas. The world premiere production was directed by Kevin Newbury and conducted by Kazem Abdullah.
Innocence is an opera in five acts by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The libretto was written in Finnish by Sofi Oksanen and translated/adapted by Aleksi Barrière.
Emily D'Angelo is a Canadian mezzo-soprano. Since making her debut at 16, D'Angelo's most notable role to date has been playing the lead in the 2023 opera Grounded.
Grounded is a 2013 play by George Brant. The play was written as a solo performance with a single character, but has also been staged with two actors. Grounded tells the story of a female US Air Force pilot who is grounded when she becomes pregnant. Her duties are altered from flying F-16 jets to piloting drones remotely, causing her psychological distress. The play was adapted into an opera of the same name, which was first performed in 2023.