Firsts are getting harder to come by in the opera world, but the Metropolitan Opera notched up another one on the opening night of its 2024/25 season. For the first time since its founding in 1883, the Met launched its season with an opera by a woman composer, Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded. And they scored a hit with Michael Mayer’s extraordinary production of this incredibly powerful, moving tragedy.
When the George Brant play Grounded premiered in 2013, it was a one-woman show exploring the then-emerging technology of drone warfare. Fast forward to the present, and drones have become commonplace in the war in Ukraine. Even more frightening is the fact that hand-held personal devices can be turned into explosives, as we have just discovered. It is that reality that helps to make the opera so emotionally devastating.
The story centers on Jess, an ace fighter pilot in the US Air Force running missions in Iraq. She is only at one with herself soaring in the blue sky. A hook-up with a Wyoming rancher named Eric results in a pregnancy. Rebuffing her commanding officer’s suggestion that she get an abortion, Jess is mustered out of the service. Her commander drives home that the US government’s investment in her has been a waste of money.
Jess returns to Wyoming, where she and Eric decide to get married. For five years, they live as a traditional married couple raising their daughter, Sam. With a new war in Afghanistan, Jess decides to re-enlist, but warfare has changed. Instead of flying her beloved plane, which is now obsolete, she is going to Las Vegas to become part of a ‘chair force’ operating a Reaper, or killer drone.
Reluctant as Jess is to embrace this new type of warfare, she excels at it. A selling point for the job is that she can go home to her husband and daughter every evening, but she now stares at a screen for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, rather than soaring through the air. She is cracking mentally but wants to complete her prize mission of taking out the Serpent, an elusive terrorist leader in a faraway place.
Reality intrudes just as she goes in for the strike, with Jess exposing a depth of humanity that comes as a jolt. In the final scene, Jess awaits court-marshal – grounded, but free.
Mayer’s concept for Grounded is responsible for much of the impact. The set itself is simple enough. The vast Met stage is divided into two parts. Above is the military sphere which Jess inhabits, and below is the civilian world – the bar where she meets Eric, the homes they share in Wyoming and Nevada, and a shopping mall. At the end, those worlds part to create the abyss of a military jail where Jess finds release.
Stage elements are relatively few. The most powerful images are the cockpit she shares with the Sensor and the Reaper hovering over the stage. The real impact comes from Kevin Adams’s lighting and the projections by Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras. Never at the Met have these technologies been used with such artistry and to such effect.
Washes of light depict the blue sky which is Jess’s true domain, mirror the results of her pregnancy test and bathe the stage in the warmth of a Wyoming sunset. Mazes of circuitry and coordinates telegraph what warfare has become in the twenty-first century. When there is a hit, a ghostly white light captures the annihilation of a human being thousands of miles away.
Since Grounded premiered at the Washington National Opera to middling reviews, Tesori and Brant have revised the opera significantly and shaved 45 minutes from the running time. A few more cuts would make the opera even tauter and thus deliver more of a punch to the gut, but this version works.
Tesori’s background is on Broadway, and this shows in her ability to craft a melody, create a mood and generate emotion. The most memorable tune is an earworm sung by Eric, and it reoccurs repeatedly to summon the bittersweet memories of domesticity and happiness. The opera has an inherent structure with most scenes separated by an expansive orchestral interlude. These not only provide moments to digest the avalanche of emotional twists and turns, but also furnish the space for Mayer and his team to work their magic with lights and projections.
One of Tesori and Brant’s more masterful strokes is how they fashion the function of a ‘kill chain’. This is a group that observes and analyzes live-drone video feeds and communicates with operators such as Jess and the Sensor. Sitting safely thousands of miles away from the enemy combatants, the kill chain coordinates the attack, and fighter pilots, ground troops or drone operators go in for the kill.
The kill chain is never seen, but their voices are heard, individually or collectively in chat. The voices are amplified, which creates a paranoia-inducing sense of being at one with the action. Pulses are racing in the audience almost as fast as they are on the stage.
As with the play, the opera is, to a large extent, a one-woman show. There are some strong supporting characters, such as Ben Bliss’s heartfelt portrayal of Eric, Greer Grimsley as the granite-hearted commanding officer and Ellie Dehn as Also Jess. The latter is Jess’s alter ego, who is not essential to the plot but does provide the musical pleasures of some excruciatingly beautiful dissonances when they combine their voices.
In his Met debut as Jess’s Sensor, Kyle Miller displayed a cheekiness and charisma that dominate the stage and a clear, firm baritone to match. When Jess snidely asks if he is twelve, he shoots back with a wicked grin, ‘Nineteen!’, and adds nonchalantly that the Air Force ‘found me at Gamicon kicking everybody’s ass at Quadcopter’.
It is Emily D’Angelo’s show, however, and she is superb as Jess. D’Angelo has a few lighter moments, mostly teasing Eric when they first meet, but otherwise she is as tightly coiled as a cobra ready to strike. Her singing is equally fierce and intense, but her dark, sinewy, scintillating mezzo-soprano was never strained or anything less than beautiful.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin delved into the score and led a performance that captured perfectly every quicksilver turn of emotion. Under his baton, each melody sang and the cacophony of war was made real in sound. The orchestra and the men of the chorus performed with equal dedication and commitment to this fascinating, gripping opera.
Tesori and Brant are theater animals. I have no idea how Grounded will fare when seen and heard soon Live in HD or over the radio, but live in the theater it is an experience that shouldn’t be missed.
Rick Perdian
Production:
Director- Michael Mayer
Libretto – George Brant
Sets – Mimi Lien
Costumes – Tom Broecker
Lighting – Kevin Adams
Projection – Jason H. Thompson & Kaitlyn Pietras
Sound – Palmer Hefferan
Choreographer – David Neumann
Dramaturg – Paul Cremo
Chorus master – Tilman Michael
Cast:
Jess – Emily D’Angelo
Eric – Ben Bliss
Bar pilot – Earle Patriarco
Commander – Greer Grimsley
Sam – Lucy LoBue
Kill chain – Christopher Bozeka (mission coordinator), Thomas Capobianco (ground control), Paul Corona (joint terminal attack controller), Christopher Job (safety observer)
Judge advocate general – Matthew Anchel
Sensor – Kyle Miller
Also Jess – Ellie Dehn
Seat warmer – Timothy Murray
Mall employees – Tyler Simpson, Patrick Miller