BY KAREN BOSSICK
An opera wrestling with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st century warfare will take front and center stage on Saturday when the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts a live simulcast of “Grounded.”
The MetHD simulcast, based on two-time Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s new opera, will start at 10:55 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, at Merlin’s Magic Lantern in Ketchum. Tickets are $20, payable by credit card only. The production, presented by Sun Valley Opera and Broadway, runs two hours and 45 minutes and the concession counter will be open.
Company of Fools presented the play form of this several years ago in the round at The Liberty Theatre in Hailey. The opera form is based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, who is considered one of opera’s compelling young stars, portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and grounds her on the “Chair Force” in an air-conditioned trailer at a remote base outside Las Vegas.
There, she operates a Reaper drone halfway around the world. She fights to maintain her sanity and her soul as she uses this new way of doing battle by remote control, her 12-hour days interrupted only by sojourns home to her daughter and tenor Ben Bliss—the Wyoming rancher who has become her husband.
In her new “cockpit,” she becomes obsessed with taking out the Serpent, who drives through the desert never leaving his car, preventing him from being positively identified. And, when it comes time to pull the trigger, all her moral beliefs are called into question.
Viewers get to see the variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above, thanks to Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging using an array of LED screens.
Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin oversees the kaleidoscopic score of Tesori, who is one of the most prolific female composers in American theater history and one of the first two women ever commissioned to compose an opera for the Met.
Her stage credits including the Tony Award-winning Best Musicals “Kimberly Akimbo” and “Fun Home.” Her third opera “Blue” garnered the music critics association award for Best New Opera.