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Moral Complexity at the Met: Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded
Our theater and music critics discuss the new opera about drone warfare and the people who wage it.
Justin Davidson: Sara, I’ve been waiting for the right occasion to double-team an opera, and this is the perfect opportunity because George Brant reworked his own one-woman play into the libretto for Grounded, and because the composer, Jeanine Tesori, comes out of the theater world. The way Lien splits the Met’s towering vertical space into strata — these tilted screens and floating raked floor that give a sense of the ascension and vastness Jess yearns for and that eventually go through this really chilling moment of becoming what they actually are. I was struck by one particular choice: We’re constantly being told how vividly Jess is forced to witness the death and dismemberment she wreaks in high definition — a fundamental difference from the life of a pilot, who drops bombs and vanishes before the boom.
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