Event Calendar
Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded
Saturday, October 26, 2024, 12:55 pm
New Production | Met Premiere
The 2024–25 Live in HD season continues with the Met-premiere production of Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded. Based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, the work wrestles with issues that go to the heart of 21st-century American society: a servicewoman’s struggle to balance family and career, the mental health challenges that follow combat experience, the morality of death rained down by remote control.
The most prolific female composer in theater history, Jeanine Tesori has written a diverse catalog for Broadway, opera, film, and television, and her most recent musical, Kimberly Akimbo, earned five Tony Awards (of eight nominations), including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. Renowned tenor Ben Bliss joins the distinguished cast as the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband.
Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the high-tech staging by Michael Mayer, which uses a vast array of LED screens to present a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.
