NEW YORK — Jess is a hotshot fighter pilot who flies bombing missions over Iraq during the Gulf War. Passionate and confident, she loves the feeling of soaring through the sky and striking a target, but from the pilot’s seat she is removed from the destruction she leaves behind. What happens when that ruin is brought into her clear view is the wrenching stuff of composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist George Brant’s Grounded, which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s new season Sept. 23.
Based on Brant’s 2013 one-woman play of the same name, the opera, which had its premiere in 2023 at the Washington National Opera, expanded the cast and used lavish video effects to flesh out the story of a soldier torn between her training and identity as a combatant and her growing recognition of the moral costs of doing her job.
Grounded is the first Met commission given to a woman and the first opera by a woman to open the season. A fierce performance by the charismatic mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo and a mesmerizing high-tech production by Michael Mayer made for an intense evening, with the pleasures of theatrical wizardry compensating for any discomfort over the subject.
When Jess becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, she leaves the Air Force, marries Eric, and moves to his ranch in Wyoming to raise their daughter. When she returns to duty five years later, she is crestfallen to be relegated to the “Chair Force” operating a Reaper drone from a remote trailer in the Nevada desert, a grim assignment indeed. For 12 hours a day, she controls a weapon from thousands of miles away, assisted by a 19-year-old camera operator recruited from a gamer convention and an unseen team of strategy advisors, the Kill Chain. But “war with all the benefits of home” — long days spent destroying targets and then picking up milk on the way home — turns out to be more traumatic than live combat, because now she can see onscreen in detail the destruction caused by her skills.
After this eventful hour-long act covering six years, the shorter Act II begins with Jess being assigned to track and destroy Serpent, a desert-dwelling enemy leader who has so far eluded his hunters. Her mental stability has already begun to fray as the conflict between her training and her growing revulsion at her inhumane task threaten her concentration on the job and her family’s harmony. Her eventual moment of rebellion has devastating consequences.
Director Mayer’s spectacular production divides the stage horizontally into a larger upper military zone, relegating civilian scenes to the lower third of the stage. Domestic scenes — a bar, Eric’s cabin, the family home, a shopping mall — are conventionally lit and filled with everyday props. In the upper area, vibrant video projections depict sky, computer screens, and explosions.
The military scenes deploy the most elaborate staging and technology: Clouds stream overhead, shifting through various shades of blue as Jess sings of her joy in flying; the chorus of enlisted men behind her march in formation, or slowly sway or gestured in response to her lyrics. Brilliant use of color enhances the emotional resonance of each scene, with emphasis on blue (the freedom of flying), pink (maternity), and gray (remote images of the desert, shown pixelated for security). The only physical props on the upper stage, a pair of gamer chairs for Jess and her sidekick, rise from the floor as Jess is installed as a drone operator. A photo image of a Reaper swells to its real-life size, wider than the Met proscenium, and is thereafter represented by a green silhouette on a black screen. At critical moments, Jess’ live image appears tiled on the video screen, larger than life. The overall use of video may be the most effective I’ve seen on an opera stage.
Tesori has composed three other operas, including Blue, winner of MCANA’s 2020 Best New Opera Award. But most of her extensive body of work is contemporary musical theater. Without sounding notably pop-influenced, Tesori’s musical language would be accessible to most theatergoers, though on Broadway unamplified operatic voices and a large orchestra are rare luxuries.
On being commissioned by the Met to write an opera, Tesori was inspired by Brant’s one-woman play and worked with the playwright to flesh out the script with additional characters and an expanded staging concept. In its move from Washington to New York, the score was heavily revised, losing 35 minutes in a fluid process unusual for opera but common in other theatrical productions. If anything, the pacing of Act I felt a bit rushed, but the show rarely dragged, a criticism leveled at the original version.
The straightforward “numbers” structure would easily work on Broadway but was effective on the Met stage as well. Tesori’s wide palette of vocal and instrumental styles covers diverse emotional territory. Robust fanfares, military tattoos, and men’s choruses create a martial atmosphere and support Jess’ confident flygirl utterances; solo winds accompany more intimate moments, and swelling strings provide rich transitional interludes.
Like a musical — or a Baroque opera, for that matter — emotional scenes are reinforced with solo arias, which transition briskly to contrasting sounds and situations. Layered vocal ensembles create tension during scenes of combat and as a means to show Jess’ increasing fragility. An original touch is the use of an amplified offstage vocal quintet, the Kill Chain, suggesting to the audience Jess’ disembodied experience under the drone operator’s headset. Vocal writing fits speech contours comfortably and gives soloists the chance to soar, though without Met titles the text is sometimes difficult to understand, especially with massed ensembles. (The audience did, however, catch Jess and the Sensor’s many F-bombs.)
Carrying the show, in her first Met opening night, was D’Angelo in a star-making turn as Jess. Her plush, penetrating mezzo projected Jess’ confidence and contentment as a pilot, as well as her vulnerability when she connects with more tender emotions. She inhabited the character with a transparency I had missed in earlier recital performances. As Also Jess, representing Jess’ fragmenting personality later in the show, soprano Ellie Dehn complemented D’Angelo’s voice beautifully.
Other than Jess and Also Jess, the remaining roles are for men (with a few lines piped by five-year-old Samantha, played charmingly by Lucy LoBue). Ben Bliss delineated the sympathetic but somewhat underwritten role of Eric, the rancher who fathers Jess’ child. His sweet tenor provided the evening’s most lyrical singing, especially in the tender “I didn’t see you coming,” which will certainly become an audition standard. Greer Grimsley’s Commander and especially Kyle Miller’s Sensor, the teen gamer turned soldier, gave strong supporting performances. Music director Yanick Nézet-Séguin led a colorful and propulsive reading, controlling quieter moments but providing power when it mattered.
Drone warfare was in its early, top-secret days when Brant began exploring the topic 25 years ago. Now it’s in the daily news on multiple fronts, and research has shown that drone operators experience PTSD at the same rate as live-combat veterans. Grounded gives this issue a face, with a gendered element for good measure. I’m not persuaded that making this a “mommy” story is more than an easy shortcut to the moral and mental health issues involved, but it does make for a tidy plot line. I’m also unconvinced by the brief flashback framing, lasting less than a minute at the beginning, nor of the resolution offered at the end, but cheers from the responsive gala audience suggest that the show indeed “landed.” It’s a fine night at the theater, and though you might forget the tunes, the questions raised will linger.
Grounded plays through Oct. 19. For tickets go here. It will have an audio stream on Oct. 9 and will be screened in select movie theaters on Oct. 19.
