Ben Heppner, left, performs as Tristan with Janice Baird as Isolde in the opera Tristan und Isolde in New York in March 2008. He is to play Captain Ahab in Dallas Opera's Moby Dick. (Seth Wenig/Associated Press)

Canadian tenor Ben Heppner is to sail the seas in search of the great white whale in the world premiere of an opera based on the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick.

Heppner will play Captain Ahab, whose obsession with the whale almost leads to the destruction of his crew, in the production by the Dallas Opera to open this April.

The score is by Jake Heggie, an American composer who previously wrote the opera Dead Man Walking, with libretto by Gene Scheer. Scheer and Heggie previously collaborated on Three Decembers and To Hell and Back.

The Dallas Opera commissioned the work to celebrate the inauguration of its new Winspear Centre opera house, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his star pupil Joshua Prince-Ramus.

Productions of the opera will also be staged in San Francisco, San Diego and Calgary. Calgary Opera co-commissioned Moby Dick, but has not yet announced the performance date.

Melville's tale, first published in 1851 and now considered an American classic, follows the adventures of Ishmael, a young man who signs on to Ahab's whaling ship. Heggie says he will bring out Melville's themes of obsession and the need for cultural understanding in the opera.

The mates are played by American baritone Morgan Smith as Starbuck and American baritone Robert Orth as Stubb, while the South Seas native Queequeg is played by New Zealand's Jonathan Lemalu.

The opera will be conducted by Patrick Summers and staged by Leonard Foglia with design by Broadway veterans Robert Brill, Jane Greenwood and Donald Holder.

Heppner is in international demand as a tenor and has performances of Wagner's Lohengrin scheduled in Berlin in January and February, as well as singing in a production of Gotterdammerung at Salzburg in March. He has a Sept. 11 recital date with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.

He will give six performances of Moby Dick in Dallas, ending May 16.