Köbun Chino Otogawa (Wei Wu) with Jobs.
music
Jobs and Chrisann (Jessica E. Jones) on an acid trip.
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Santa Fe Opera: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
Laurene Jobs (Sasha Cooke) urges her husband to take care of himself.
Brenda Rae in the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor.
incident light
Young Steve Jobs (Asher Corbin) putters at his work table just before the garage walls transform into circuit boards and part for the dramatic entrance of the mature Steve Jobs (below).
July 26, 2017
SANTA FE – The first thing to be
said about Santa Fe Opera’s world-
premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve
Jobs is that the work and the staging
together c0nstitute a magnificent
achievement, possibly as near to
Richard Wagner’s ideal of a
Gesamtkunstwerk, a fully integrated
unity of all the arts, as any opera
production I have seen.
The second thing to be said about
Steve Jobs, with music by the
American composer Mason Bates and
libretto by Mark Campbell, is that it is
not an operatic biopic about Steve
Jobs, the visionary/jerk who
cofounded Apple Computer (now
called Apple Inc.). It is a work of
fiction, drawn in part from Jobs’s life,
but animated by a conflict that is far
from unique to his story – the conflict
between the single-minded pursuit of
an abstract ideal and the obligations
we all have as human beings in
relationship with others. Mr.
Campbell’s libretto resolves the
conflict near the end of this 90-minute,
one-act opera in a redemption that
doesn’t quite ring true, but redemption
is central to the American civic
religion, and this is quintessentially
an American opera.
The work is cast in 20 scenes,
beginning in the garage of the Jobs
family home where Paul Jobs builds
a work table as a birthday present for his young adopted son, Steve. The final scene is Steve’s memorial service. The intervening scenes jump back and forth in time but relate some of the major events in Jobs’s life – the Reed College calligraphy class that established his zeal for simplicity in design; his involvement with Zen Buddhism and his spiritual advisor, Kōbun Chino Otogawa; working with eventual Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak in the family garage; his relationship with his first girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, and his refusal to take responsibility for their child, Lisa; his more-or-less forced 1985 resignation from Apple; meeting his
his future wife, Laurene Powell, in a lecture hall where he was giving a talk in 1989; after his return to Apple, envisioning the “one device” (the
iPhone, though the name is never mentioned) that could fit in a pocket and do everything; his refusal to seek legitimate medical treatment for the cancer that would kill him in 2011, at age 56.
Most important, the libretto stresses Jobs’s commitment to his design aesthetic, both in the look of products and in the way they function. He obstinately aimed for simplicity. The Italian word for “obstinate” is “ostinato,” which is also the musical term for a persistently repeating rhythmic or melodic figure. A supporting player in much music of the past, the ostinato moved into the spotlight in late-20th-century American minimalism, a style that is sometimes prominent in Mason Bates’s music. But when ostinati appear in Steve Jobs, they serve as a unifying framework on which to hang countless complexities and nuances, both in the live orchestra and in the electronic sounds controlled (in this production) by the composer himself. The ostinato as used by Mr. Bates is analagous to the “datum” in architecture, the line or plane that unifies the whole – the simple idea that underlies and makes possible a complex composition.
Thus, in the scene in which Jobs introduces his “one device,” the frenetic, protean, brilliantly colored music perfectly reflects both the device’s multiplicity of functions and its simple ordering principles. It also reflects the creative energy in a mind both overcrowded and tightly focused.
The music is not always minimalist in procedure, but it is always closely attuned to the emotional resonance of the libretto. Jobs rejects Chrisann’s pregnancy to the sound of ugly slashing chords. Laurene expresses her concern for her husband’s health in music of lovely tenderness, for strings and guitar. Traditional Japanese temple sounds accompany the scene where Köbun asks Job to accept his mortality. And was that an echo of Brian Wilson in the richly harmonized chant of a meditation class? Throughout, electronic sounds are seamlessly integrated with the conventional orchestra, whose color palette is already enormous on its own. From scene to scene, the music changes character significantly, keeping the listener interested and never outlasting its welcome. The vocal lines are natural and well suited to the voice.
The scenography is not an afterthought in this production but is part and parcel of the work. The stage design is a collaboration among director Kevin Newbury, scenic designer Victoria “Vita” Tzykun, lighting designer Japhy Weideman, projection design team 59 Productions, and choreographer Chloe Treat, who plotted the near-constant movement of the six slablike towers that serve variously as walls, “one device” mockups, and screens for the magical projections. The show is a visual feast: One particularly memorable example is the transformation of an apple orchard into a psychedelic phantasmagoria (shades of Peter Max, perhaps), when Jobs and Chrisann take an acid trip.
Leading the consistently excellent cast were the stirring Steve Jobs of baritone Edward Parks; the warm, humane Laurene of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; and the powerful Köbun of bass Wei Wu, who was particularly adept at conveying his character’s ironic wit. Conductor Michael Christie led the excellent orchestra with incisive rhythms and unflagging clarity. Mr Newbury’s stage direction flowed easily and was nicely detailed but never fussy.
The audience responded rapturously on opening night, and sales have
been brisk enough to justify adding a performance to the originally scheduled six. Remaining performances are at 8 pm on Aug. 4, 10, 15, 22, and 25.
Also seen at Santa Fe Opera this season were Rimsky-Korsakov’s seldom-staged The Golden Cockerel and Donizetti’s familiar Lucia di Lammermoor. The only reason to produce the latter nowadays is to showcase a great coloratura soprano, and Santa Fe Opera had one in Brenda Rae. Her mad scene was riveting theater, and her whole performance was a triumph of agile, accurate, beautiful singing. There really is no reason at all to put The Golden Cockerel on stage. The music is flimsy and repetitive, the fantasy libretto tedious, though not without a certain wink-wink currency in the main character, the inept leader of a powerful country, and his two idiot sons. The production had its charms but could not save the work.
Alas, I wasn’t able to stay for the July 29 opening of Handel’s Alcina, and I missed Johann Strauss Jr.’s frothy Die Fledermaus.
Mike Greenberg
A simple idea, a complex life
Steve Jobs (Edward Parks) introduces the revolutionary “one device.”
Photos by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera
Steve Wozniak (Garrett Sorenson) and Jobs in the garage where Apple was born.