Stephen Costello and Ryan Speedo Green. Karen Almond/Met Opera

After its annual winter hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera reopened with a pair of productions that chronicle their protagonists’ dangerous, intensely personal quests. The journey in Moby-Dick, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s adaptation of Herman Melville’s epic novel in its Met premiere, ends in death and destruction, while the latest revival of Beethoven’s Fidelio concludes with the victory of good over evil. If neither production could be deemed a triumph, both proved to be bright spots in what has been, so far, a pretty lackluster Met season.

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Condensing Melville’s vast and discursive work into a three-hour opera may have seemed as foolish as Captain Ahab’s increasingly desperate voyage to find the whale that maimed him, but Heggie and Scheer’s Moby-Dick has been met with success since its 2010 premiere at the Dallas Opera, though it has not proved as popular as Heggie’s Dead Man Walking which played at the Met last season. Since Dallas, Leonard Foglia’s dynamically effective production has since traveled to Canada and Australia as well as other U.S. cities. It has now arrived, expanded for the Met’s huge stage, teeming with life aboard the Pequod ship as it sails to its final doomed encounter with its target.

Robert Brill’s evocative set, replete with elaborate rigging and billowing sails, augmented by Elaine J. McCarthy’s striking animated projections, sometimes makes it difficult to spot the principals among the many sailors, but Foglia is usually successful in foregrounding the five around whom the opera focuses.

A crucial decision by the opera’s creators—one which ultimately lessens Moby-Dick’s impact—has been to dilute the character of Ahab. It’s his obsession to find and kill the great white whale that propels the action, but we gain few insights into his compulsive monomania. The audience is invited to learn more about the inner lives of Greenhorn and........

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