Heggie and Scheer's Moby-Dick

After earning his Ph.D. from Columbia, Robert K. Wallace began his career at Northern Kentucky University, USA where he is Regents Professor and teaches courses in Literature and the Arts. Wallace's books include Jane Austen and Mozart, Melville and Turner, Frank Stella's 'Moby-Dick, and Douglass and Melville.

"it is rare, indeed, that an opera production as brilliantly conceived as Scheer and Leonard Foglia's functions so seamlessly with score and libretto to form a unified whole. . . . [Wallace's] scene-by-scene and, at times, moment-by-moment analysis not only reveals the author's remarkable facility with the work but provides numerous specifics to listen for in Moby-Dick."--Opera News "Wallace really gets the piece, he really loves the piece and every aspect of that is evident. This is a wonderfully scholarly work, but there is great heart in it as well. I was fascinated."--Darren K. Woods, General Director, Fort Worth Opera "Wallace's account is both detailed and insightful, with dozens of illustrations that trace the evolution of the opera from page to stage. Interviews with the composer, librettist, and members of the cast and creative team are included at every turn, providing personal recollections that reinforce and enhance Wallace's own commentary. . . . Accessible to opera lovers or anyone who has read Melville's original novel, Wallace's book will be the perfect companion volume when Moby-Dick is eventually issued on DVD or Blu-ray."--Opera Now "Wallace's book is at its best where it gives a sense of the sheer scale of the enterprise and of the many obstacles that Heggie, Scheer, and their creative team had to overcome in rendering Melville's vision. . . . Heggie and Scheer's Moby-Dick is a richly detailed account of how the book often regarded as the Great American Novel came to be a Grand American Opera."--Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies