Jeanine Tesori Wants More Broadway Energy at the Opera

Last year, the Metropolitan Opera hosted a concert celebration of the music of composer Stephen Schwartz. Jeanine Tesori, composer of Broadway musicals including Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo, was the pianist for the event. “[Director] Michael Mayer asked me to do that, and I was like, why would I do that? I realized I wanted to experience something from the Met stage to understand what it would be like. I'd been there hundreds of times, but I've never played from the stage. And I've never sung on the stage... because we want people to stay.”

The largest repertory opera house in the world, the Metropolitan Opera House seats 3,794 people, with 245 standing positions, across six levels. (There’s much, much more to the building the public doesn’t see.) It’s the kind of venue that might make a Broadway theater suddenly feel incommodious; the Booth Theatre, home to Kimberly Akimbo for two years, has just 800 seats across two levels.

“The response in that audience from so many theater people was like the place was going to lift off,” said Tesori of her experience on the Met stage. “When there's agreement with 5,000 people, it goes into a feeling of a sporting event. Having just been at the U.S. Open, where there are 25,000 people and some player makes a great shot, and the place explodes—you just think, oh my god. When people are appreciative at the same moment you feel the jet fuel.”

Grounded is Tesori's fourth opera and her first commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, where it will open the 2024-25 season.

It began as a solo play by George Brant; Anne Hathaway starred in a 2015 production at the Public Theater, directed by Julie Taymor. Over the past decade, Tesori and Brant have expanded the 85-minute play into a full-length opera with multiple characters, running two hours and 20 minutes including a 30-minute intermission. Tesori composed the music while Brant adapted his original work into the libretto. Michael Mayer, who also helms Swept Away this Broadway season, directs.

The opera, like the play, centers on a hot-shot fighter pilot—now named Jess—who is assigned to operate a drone in a secret location outside of Las Vegas, taking out targets halfway across the world.

“The music is exactly what one would hope for in a modern opera,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, commented. “It’s full of melody and memorable tunes, like in a Broadway musical,” he said, before clarifying, “A good Broadway musical. It's a score that you'll never forget once you've heard it.”

Working with an 80-piece orchestra—as opposed to Broadway’s paltry 20 or so—has been a thrill for Tesori, though part of the art of using opera musicians effectively is knowing when not to. “One of the lessons I was taught—which I think is a life lesson—is just because you have 80 pieces, don't have 80 pieces playing all the time. That is a misuse of power musically.” On the other hand, “a bass drum that is played very softly in an opera house is very scary. You can just hear the thunder coming.” The idea, always, is to “let the ear go on a journey.”

Tesori is still in awe of opera performers and their ability to project their voices, unamplified, the distance of a football field. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo plays Jess; the Washington Post praised her “terse swagger, savage wit and compressed sensitivity” in the role. Tesori involved herself in the casting process and has worked closely with D’Angelo—as she has done with leading ladies like Victoria Clark, Sutton Foster and Beth Malone in the past—to learn how to best use (and avoid misusing) her voice. “When she is just sailing, I can't help but scream out: 'Yes, Emily, you go!’” At the same time, “vocal health is important.”

As Tesori admits, she has brought a bit of Broadway's vivacity to the sanctified confines of the Met. “I come to the opera with a great sense of fun and joy. Because why else are we there? It's taken them a little while to get used to me in that way, busting through the formality. I am an informal person. I just feel like screaming after the chorus does something extraordinary: ‘F**k yes!’”

For her part, Tesori would welcome a bit of rowdy enthusiasm (within reason) at the Met. “When I think of theater people, they're filled with unbridled joy and unbridled passion. I really love a robust audience. I want people to express themselves.”

Grounded opens on September 23, the day after the national tour of Kimberly Akimbo, starring Carolee Carmello as Kimberly, kicks off in Denver, Colorado. “They have really made it their own,” said Tesori. “When something works with one cast, the real test for the writing is, does it work with another cast? So it has been quite moving to watch." As for Carmello, she is "surgically funny—but she also has a very tender part of her that she's allowing to come through." 

While Grounded's Broadway connections are notable, in truth, there’s no shortage of artists crossing over between Broadway and opera, whether onstage (Norm Lewis, Audra McDonald, Joshua Henry, Kelli O’Hara) or behind the scenes (director Robert O’Hara, choreographer Camille Brown, writer David Henry Hwang, scenic designer Mimi Lien, to name a few).

Still, there’s no question there could be more intermingling between the audiences—and there’s plenty of room at the Met to welcome more musical theater fans. “What people discover when they come to the Met who haven't been here before, if they're Broadway lovers, is that a Met opera is like a Broadway musical on steroids,” said Gelb.

Tesori, similarly, hopes fans of her work will be enticed up to Lincoln Center. “I just want to see people feel welcome at that place—because I do, and I never thought I would.” If it helps, she's prepared to welcome newcomers personally. "I'll be outside by the gelato stand."

Has she been partaking of the gelato stand?

"Well, I have to take my pants out. So the answer is yes."