February 20, 2025
We are thrilled to have partnered with The Metropolitan Opera to celebrate Moby-Dick, which returns to the stage March 2025 after its acclaimed runs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. Jake Heggie’s stunning 2010 adaptation of Herman Melville’s sea-faring epic novel brings together a cast of standouts to tell the timeless tale of Captain Ahab’s maniacal quest for vengeance against the giant white whale who bit off his leg. The opera adaptation further heightens the elemental forces of the sea, and “chillingly probes its central characters’ motivations and longings” (Chicago Tribune).
In preparation for the Met’s production based on this great American novel, The Center welcomed a panel of speakers to dive into Melville’s timeless tale. Joining us in conversation was librettist Gene Scheer and director Leonard Foglia. The conversation was led by the author Sheridan Hay (The Secret of Lost Things), resident instructor of our Moby-Dick reading group. Accompanying the panel was a musical performance by baritone Thomas Glass and pianist Bryan Wagorn. Highly relevant today, Moby-Dick is an endless source of meaning, filled with conflicting philosophies that offer insights into our past, present, and future.
Featured Book
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Moby-Dick
By Herman Melville
Published by Penguin Publishing Group
Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature.
Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.
Featuring
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Gene Scheer
Gene Scheer
Mr. Scheer’s work is noted for its scope and versatility. With the composer Jake Heggie, he has collaborated on many projects, including the critically acclaimed 2010 Dallas Opera world premiere, Moby-Dick, starring Ben Heppner as Captain Ahab; Three Decembers (Houston Grand Opera), which starred Frederica von Stade; and the lyric drama To Hell and Back (Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra), which featured Patti LuPone. Other works by Scheer and Heggie include Camille Claudel: Into the fire, a song cycle premiered by Joyce di Donato and the Alexander String Quartet. Mr. Scheer worked as librettist with Tobias Picker on An American Tragedy, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005 and on Therese Raquin which was produced by the Dallas Opera in 2001. Other collaborations include the lyrics for Wynton Marsalis’s It Never Goes Away, featured in Mr. Marsalis’s work Congo Square. With the composer Steven Stucky, Mr. Scheer wrote the oratorio August 4, 1964, for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The work was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for best classical composition. In 2015, Mr. Scheer collaborated with Joby Talbot on the opera Everest, based on the doomed 1996 Everest expedition. With Jennifer Higdon, Mr. Scheer wrote an operatic adaptation of Cold Mountain, which premiered in the summer of 2015 at the Santa Fe Opera. This work won the International Opera award, presented in London, for the best World premiere in 2015. Recently, along with Ms. Higdon, Mr. Scheer was nominated for a Grammy for his work on Cold Mountain for best classical composition. In December of 2016 Mr. Scheer and Jake Heggie premiered an operatic adaptation of It’s a Wonderful Life for the Houston Grand Opera. Also a composer in his own right, Mr. Scheer has written a number of songs for singers such as Renée Fleming, Sylvia McNair, Stephanie Blythe, Jennifer Larmore, Denyce Graves, and Nathan Gunn. The distinguished documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, prominently featured Mr. Scheer’s song “American Anthem” (as sung by Norah Jones) in his Emmy Award-winning World War II documentary for PBS entitled The War.
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Leonard Foglia
Leonard Foglia
Leonard Foglia is a theater and opera director as well as librettist.
Broadway productions: Master Class, Wait Until Dark, Thurgood (filmed for HBO), The People in the Picture, On Golden Pond, The Gin Game.
Off-Broadway: Let Me Down Easy (filmed for PBS), Notes From The Field (filmed for HBO), One Touch of Venus, The Stendhal Syndrome, If Memory Serves, About Alice. He directed the world premieres of the operas of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Everest, Moby Dick (filmed for PBS), It’s a Wonderful Life, Cold Mountain, The End of the Affair, Three Decembers, Stonewall, A Coffin in Egypt (also librettist), Cruzar la Cara de la Luna/To Cross the Face of the Moon (also librettist), El Pasado Nunca Se Termina/The Past Is Never Finished (also librettist), El Milagro del Recuerdo/The Miracle of Remembering (also librettist). His production of Dead Man Walking has been seen across the United States and Europe. The three ‘mariachi operas’ for which he wrote the librettos have been staged on three continents and are continually produced in the United States.
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Sheridan Hay
Sheridan Hay
Sheridan Hay holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her first novel, The Secret of Lost Things (Doubleday/Anchor, 2006), which features a lost novel by Herman Melville, was a Book Sense Pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover selection, shortlisted for the Border’s Original Voices Fiction Prize, and nominated for the International Impact Award. A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, foreign rights have been sold in fourteen countries. Sheridan has led The Center’s Moby-Dick reading group many times, as well as the popular Henry James group.
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Thomas Glass (Baritone)
Thomas Glass (Baritone)
Baritone Thomas Glass is the winner of the 2022 Mabel Dorn Reader Foundation Prize at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and a Grand Prize Wilmer at the 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He is an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and Minnesota Opera Resident Artist Program. In the 2024-2025 season, Thomas makes a return to the Metropolitan Opera to cover Starbuck in Moby Dick and Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. Highlights of recent seasons include house and role debuts at The Metropolitan Opera, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Berkshire Opera Festival, Atlanta Opera, and Arizona Opera. He made role debuts at Houston Grand Opera as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, Mercutio in Romeo et Juliette, Marcello in La bohème, and the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia. Born in Edina, Minnesota, Thomas holds degrees from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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Bryan Wagorn
Bryan Wagorn
Canadian pianist and vocal coach Bryan Wagorn regularly performs throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as soloist, chamber musician, and recital accompanist to the world’s leading singers and instrumentalists. A participant at the Marlboro Music Festival and music staff at the Glyndebourne Festival, Mr. Wagorn has served as Staff Coach at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and on the faculty of the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute and Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra. He has been a guest coach at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Program and at the Glyndebourne Festival’s Jerwood Young Artist Program. Wagorn made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2009, and has since performed two extensive tours with Jeunesses Musicales de Canada, as well as chamber music with members of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony. Mr. Wagorn holds degrees in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada, the University of Ottawa, the Mannes College of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He is a graduate of The Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and serves on the faculty of Mannes College of Music.
