Video: Jeanine Tesori and Michael Mayer on the Met Opera's GROUNDED

Watch as Composer Jeanine Tesori and Director Michael Mayer discuss their previous collaborations, the process of bringing Grounded to the Met, and the differences between opera and musical theater.

Mayer says more things are the same than not in directing musicals and opera. "We're still telling the story using basically the same instruments, right? We've got the same toolbox."

"To me, the difference of Opera and Broadway is just the enormity of what tutti means. What The Met does is it honors the epic nature of an individual story like this woman. Because so often [in theaters] we have to put women in a small space, which is beautiful - because there's beauty in limits. But here it's limitless." said Tesori.

The season opens with the Met premiere of two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded, an opera commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating Reaper drones. Maestro Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as Eric—a Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband.

Jeanine Tesori’s new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, wrestles with complex, often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century warmaking: the ethical conflicts created by the use of modern military technology and the psychological and emotional toll supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons.

Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. Confronted by the challenges of this new way of doing battle, she must fight to hold on to her sanity—and her soul.

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the Met premiere of Tesori’s score and a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as Eric, the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.