Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre, Salt Lake City
January 20, 2018

Well received contemporary operas are not as rare as the naysayers like to tell us – in recent memory Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, George Benjamin’s Written On Skin and Liza Lim’s Tree of Codes all went down well with audiences and critics alike – but getting a second staging often proves a bigger ask. This was particularly true in the case of Jake Heggie and Gene Sheer’s ambitious and applauded adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, which made a colossal splash at Dallas Opera in 2010. In its singular, state-of-the-art staging the work received its Australian premiere in 2011 at State Opera of South Australia (one of the original co-commissioners and producers), but there matters stalled.

Utah Opera Company in Moby Dick © Dana Sohm

Companies, it seems, were lining up to put it on, but one by one they fell away, daunted by the price tag required to launch this high-tech operatic behemoth on world stages. Moby Dick appeared destined to be cast adrift on the endless sea of operatic memory – until now. Enter Utah Opera, in this its...