In this joint venture with Dallas and San Diego Operas, Heggie and Scheer concentrate on the interpersonal dynamics of individual men thrown together in the isolation of a ship at sea.

 

Moby-Dick focuses on the struggle between the obsessive Capt Ahab and his first mate, Starbuck, who emerges as the chief counterweight to Ahab's madness.

But other characters too make their distinctive presences felt: Queequeg, the noble Pacific Islander; Pip, the black cabin boy, given a tellingly heightened prominence; and of course Melville's pseudonymous narrator, the first-time whaler who is referred to as Greenhorn.