Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The most luminous cadence in Grounded comes when the chorus sings “Boom” as a missile from a Reaper drone obliterates its target. In Jeanine Tesori’s score, which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season, it’s neither ironic nor satirical, but a smooth ambivalence that encapsulates the musical strengths and dramatic weaknesses of the work.Commissioned by the Met and adapted by George Brant from his award-winning one-woman play, Grounded is the story of Jess, an F-16 pilot fighting in Iraq. Back in Wyoming, she meets and marries Eric, and they have a daughter, Sam. Grounded from flying fighters, she becomes a drone pilot, spending 12 hours a day in a trailer in Las Vegas remotely hunting and killing people halfway around the world.This is the fourth opera by Tesori, a Tony Award-winning Broadway composer. She and Missy Mazzoli are the first women to be commissioned by the Met. With young star mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as Jess and tenor Ben Bliss as Eric, Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the pit, and a production from Michael Mayer, it is a prestige event. Grounded has the polish for that stature. The music is tuneful and has a fine pace. At moments, Tesori borrows from Aaron Copland and Philip Glass, but her open, delicate voice is consistent. D’Angelo has a beautiful sound and a self-effacing expression; she disappears inside the role. Bliss’s voice has gained richness in the past few seasons, and his easy lyricism suits Eric’s regular-guy nature. Inside Mimi Lien’s LED stage design that represents everything from blue skies to a drone-targeting matrix, Grounded pleases the ear and holds the attention.It also hints at more but never delivers. Sometimes this is purely musical: Eric’s act one aria “I Didn’t See You Coming” is one of the most affecting moments, but it’s so brief that, just as it sinks in, everything moves on. Dramatically, the story is about Jess’s crisis over waging drone warfare; it’s in the words, but not in the music. An alter-ego, Also Jess (soprano Ellie Dehn), emerges out of this crisis in act two, and the two Jesses sing in harmony; there’s no musical crisis.Jess’s problem is mostly corporate stress; there are no ethical or moral qualms over the corrosive drone war programme, the opera’s raison d’être. The offstage voices of a bureaucratic “Kill Chain”, who advise Jess through her headset, are like bad middle managers, poorly mixed over the speakers. If Tesori and Brant have any conflicted feelings, they remain silent. And except for a characterful stretch that opens act two, the music has little drama. Grounded tells, it doesn’t show.The opera features fine playing from the orchestra, but there’s little below the surface. D’Angelo is game, and throws herself into Jess’s final aria. It’s meant to be triumphant but there’s too little preceding conflict for it to much matter.★★★☆☆To October 19, metopera.org
