The Moby Dick Blues: Classic Melville Novel Transforms Into Modern Opera

The first time I picked up Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, I managed only the first hundred pages before feeling hopelessly lost. But even without reading the novel, its adventurous plot and solemn themes still exist in the periphery of my consciousness, and I’m willing to bet within that of most Americans too: the waters off the coast of a small New England town, the mad Captain Ahab, and the white whale. When I heard news about the premiere of The Moby Dick Blues, an experimental off-Broadway opera, my curiosity naturally spiked.

The Moby Dick Blues, written by Michael Gorman and directed by Joe John Battista, has been in the works for seven years. It builds on Gorman’s earlier trilogy of plays called The Honor and Glory of Whaling. The new opera, like the trilogy, is a contemporary, and as Gorman said, “iconoclastic,” interpretation of Moby-Dick. When Gorman’s brother, a New England fisherman and a victim of a drug overdose, tragically passed away, Gorman sought ways to honor his brother, shed light on the struggles of addiction, and connect directly to the sentiments of working-class communities in New England. The Moby Dick Blues is an opera of metaphors: “What was Ahab but an addict, really, and what was the white whale but an allusion to opium, and heroin, its contemporary scourge,” Gorman said.

In an interview with Straus Media, Gorman and Battista explained their inspirations and hopes for this opera. “There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method”: That’s a famous line from Moby-Dick outlining the equilibrium of precision and chaos needed to hunt a whale, and a line chosen by Gorman that encapsulates the opera’s intended atmosphere. “It takes all hands on deck to hunt a whale,” Gorman said. In a production with over 20 actors and many more working on it, “this opera corrals the chaos.”

Like the earlier trilogy, the opera will be shown at La Mama Theater for three weeks. La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, Gorman’s “artistic mother,” is known for exploring unconventional and provocative themes with alternative, downtown, and gritty and groovy music. For Gorman, three weeks at LaMama is “an end in itself,” but he believes the opera has a future on Broadway.

A friend and director of Gorman’s suggested that transitioning to a blues opera might help in the pursuit of Broadway. With a blues opera in mind, the process for script writing began to advance rapidly, “I went through my dialogue scenes—and I had always had music underscoring them—but there would be a line that would jump out in each scene, and I had my titles for the songs in 10 minutes. . . . The titles grew out of the musicality to the dialogue.”

When you hear the word opera, what comes to mind? The Viennese Staatsoper in Austria? Mozart and Puccini? Over-the-top costumes and hairstyles? Forget what you think you know, because The Moby Dick Blues takes the meaning of “opera” in stride, and offers a unique interpretation of the traditional art. “Opera is a very exciting form—it’s wide open, and it can be very experimental,” Gorman said.

If Gorman is the captain, Battista is the first mate—equally important to the ship’s survival, but serving very different roles. Battista, the director, music composer, and a blues guitar player himself, has worked on the score for the last five years. “When I first saw the script, delivery method, and incredible story, it gave me such power to see how you can get a powerful message across, enjoy it, and absolutely revel in the excitement and the pleasure of the music and message at the same time.” He wanted the words and the message to shine, and jokingly added, “I can listen to a song for 10 years and I don’t know what they’re singing about, even though it’s my favorite song.” This is not the case with The Moby Dick Blues. Through the good and the bad, the rhetoric keeps you entertained.

Battista acknowledges that this opera deals with difficult themes but understands that confrontation can help manage addiction. “If someone was in a chair with a group, and they started to talk about just recovery, you get scared, you know what’s ahead of you, you know it’s a serious subject. . . . What we’re doing is getting across the power of addiction through entertainment and enlightenment, so that every time it pops up, you grab ahold of it, and you don’t run from it. You absorb it and enjoy it, and it moves on to something else, and it then reminds you again.”

Battista deliberately did not want the score to be one style of music, and he used blues as a foundation for all that came after. “The blues is nothing but a good person feeling bad,” he told me. The Moby Dick Blues incorporates rock, rap, alternative, and even Appalachian acoustic music to convey its message. “Music has a way of transcending a lot of pain, and it brings joy at the same time,” Battista said.

The Moby Dick Blues draws inspiration from earlier plays, such as Angels in America, which addressed the AIDS epidemic, or the Torch Song Trilogy, which, although different in subject matter, took a trilogy and turned it into one form before reaching Broadway. Early viewers of The Moby Dick Blues likened its initial impressions to Hadestown, the seven-year and very successful Broadway musical. Like these three shows, “this opera has the potential to create a cultural space, and to reach a much broader audience than just being on the fringe or coming from the outside. . . . We want to have an impact not just dramatically, but socially,” Gorman said.

To address your likely most pressing question, Do you need to have read the novel? Interestingly, Gorman’s story is somewhat like mine. “If anyone has tried to read Moby-Dick, it’s probably like your story. The first time I read it in college, I read part of it. Later on, I picked it up, ended up reading it, and now have torn it to shreds,” Gorman said. It took even the writer of an opera about Moby-Dick multiple attempts to finish the novel. “Melville is very experimental, and this book is open to interpretation on every level. Bring your own interpretations, and don’t let not having read the book stop you,” Gorman said.

“Our goal is that if we asked the audience to join us on stage, they would feel welcome, and feel as if they could do it. A feeling that the community can step up on stage and perform without having to ask permission,” Battista said at the end of the interview. To borrow Abraham Lincoln’s words about democracy, The Moby Dick Blues is an opera of the community, by the community, and for the community.

The Moby Dick Blues running through June 22 at LaMama Experimental Theatre Club at 66 E 4th St.