BIO-OPERA

centuries, but the sexual frankness of Adès’ tale gave Margaret’s high society antics a trashy, early-television-era appeal.

Speaking of television, Jerry Springer: The Opera may not actually be an opera, but it does expertly capture the cult worship of early 2000s talk show hosts. Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee’s work elicited as many complaints during its 3-year London run as Springer’s own program did in its heyday. The unflinching raunchiness of the libretto wouldn’t raise many eyebrows today, but the juxtaposition of high-brow and low still makes an uncomfortable impression.

Gaddafi – A Living Myth premiered in 2006 and it too resists classification as an opera, at least in the traditional sense. English National Opera commissioned the work from composer and electronic music bandmember Steven Chandra Savale, and everyone involved took a beating in the press. It was saddled at the time with nothing less than the “redefining” the operatic art form, but most found it as odd and unpleasant as its principal subject. Librettist Richard Thomas would return to the gossip pages in 2011 on a project with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. Anna Nicole replayed the tragicomic story of model-turned-punchline Anna Nicole Smith, the centerfold with the highly public life that culminated in a controversial marriage to an 89-year-old billionaire. Notions of beauty, greed, privacy and grief all vie for our gaze in what Michael White of The New York

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Stage Arts

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Times called the newest addition to the “sisterhood of the fallen”. Like the operatic version of Margaret Campbell, this Anna Nicole is familiar too, in her way.

The list, as previously mentioned... Marylin Monroe, Malcom X, Oliver Sacks... goes on and on. And it brings us, for now, to 2019 and the premiere of The (R) Evolution of Steve Jobs by Mason Bates and Mark Campbell. Here was a man with an arguably greater impact on our lives than all the above names combined. By some estimates, his phones can be found in the pockets and handbags of 28% of the world’s cellular customers, and his signature jeans and black mock turtleneck have embedded themselves in our collective subconsciousness. Ask any person to picture a stereotypical modern tech-maestro in their mind’s eye, and they will see Steve Jobs.

Jobs may have moved through the world like a god at times, but he was no angel. For all his contributions to communication and productivity, his story was littered with troubling personal choices and bad faith acts. He could be warm and welcoming on stage, but cold and calculating in the office. He was a visionary world-builder. He was a deadbeat dad. In other words, ideal for opera.

For his part, (R)Evolution of Steve Jobs librettist Mark Campbell knew the challenge he was facing. In a recent interview, he admitted some initial reluctance about representing Jobs’ personal journey on stage. But he quickly understood that there were opportunities for nuanced humanity in an iconic, complicated man like the Apple co-founder, that his evolution had lessons for all of us. Still, the line between vilification and glorification was very fine, and Campbell had to walk it carefully if he hoped to interrogate, and perhaps re-shape, the version of Steve Jobs we all have in our heads.

When asked about his process as a librettist, Campbell says he “starts from the heart” and that his job is to “write words people will want to sing.” It’s an ideal starting place for The (R)Evolution of Steve Jobs. No other art form, not even film, has as many tools at its disposal to tackle such a topic. Operas about people like Anna Nicole Smith, Colonel Gaddafi and Jerry Springer might not stand the test of time, but that doesn’t mean they were bad ideas. Because it’s music that best unties the knots of narrative impossibility. Song is ultimately more powerful than any special effect, any literary trick. It doesn’t always work, sure. But when it does...

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