It was the classic tale of girl-meets-drone at the Metropolitan Opera’s season opener and gala fundraising dinner last night, where guests, including Susan Sarandon and Edie Falco, gathered to celebrate the premiere of Grounded, a new opera with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by George Brant.
“Wagner had Brünnhilde, Puccini had Tosca…and now Jeanine Tesori and George Brant have given us Jess,” said Peter Gelb, the opera’s general manager, referring to the opera’s heroine. Played with ease and devastating depth by the up-and-coming mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, Jess is a fighter pilot in the Iraq war whose unexpected pregnancy forces her to become a drone pilot and confront the emotional and psychological toll of war-via-joystick.
As the national anthem played just before curtain—an opening night tradition for the Met that felt eerily appropriate for the evening’s performance—the audience settled in for takeoff. With mesmerizing digital projections by Jason Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras, the Michael Mayer-directed production moved swiftly. After the final curtain, guests crossed the plaza under a whisper of rain to the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater for the gala dinner.
Fresh out of her costume of flight fatigues and into an exquisite black Saint Laurent evening coat over a Burberry silver-mesh dress, D’Angelo was radiant if a bit shell-shocked at the post-show gathering. “This feels a bit like armor,” she said, tugging at her jacket as a line of well-wishers snaked around her table. “I get to hide a little bit in my coat.” One plus of modern opera that Gelb observed: there are no panniers or powdered wigs for the stars to dust off, making the transition from dressing room to dinner much easier.
Not only was it the Canadian singer’s big opening night, but it just so happened to be her 30th birthday as well. Gelb, accompanied by D’Angelo’s costar, the tenor Ben Bliss, led what is possibly the most mellifluous round of “Happy Birthday” in the song’s history just before dinner was served amid the hall’s Elie Nadelman sculptures.
Tesori, after accepting hearty congratulations from the actress Patricia Clarkson, was reflective on this moment, nearly a decade in the making. “You just don’t know until you know,” she said, koan-like, of how the work would be received by the discerning Met audience (they loved it).
The evening also held a special family significance for the Tony-winning composer of Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo: her grandfather was also a composer who dreamed of having his work performed at the Met but died before it was realized. “Who would ever have thought that his granddaughter would fulfill his dream.”
As the last bubbles of champagne fizzed, happy partygoers descended the grand staircase out into the night. The actor Michael Cerveris escorted his Gilded Age co-star, Christine Baranski, in a sweeping, white Oscar de la Renta column gown (with opera-length gloves, of course) out to the Revson Fountain, where they happily signed autographs for a fan.
The big questions and heavy themes of the new piece—surveillance, endless wars, veteran mental health—did not dampen the celebratory spirit of the evening, though an air of politics was unavoidable. “With all of the political lies taking place in this election cycle,” Gelb said in his earlier remarks, “keep coming to the oasis of artistic truth known as the Metropolitan Opera.”