Apple founder Steve Jobs died in 2011 and in 2017 the Santa Fe Opera premiered a work about the revolutionary inventor and visionary. A movie about Steve Jobs came out even earlier than the opera. Why make a piece of theater about a person who is so well known that there is very little we can still learn about him? And if we don’t know enough, we can always get more information with a click of a button, perhaps on an iMac, iPhone, iPad or any other device Jobs developed. Composer Mason Bates and librettist Marc Campbell thought there is more to Steve Jobs than what we know from the news media and that opera is the best medium to explore his complex personality. Their creation, The (Revolution) of Steve Jobs, looks more into the protagonist’s personal development and his inner turmoil than his inventions. The Washington National Opera presented the work for the first time last Friday.
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, is a one-act opera in 19 scenes, including a prologue and an epilogue, both set in the garage of Steve’s childhood home, where it all began when his father made him a workbench for his 10th birthday. Thus the opera’s main character makes a full circle of life, after abandoning his own youthful ideals for an insatiable quest for power, and subsequently realizing the errors of his ways.
As a young man, Steve Jobs learned Japanese calligraphy and practiced Zen Buddhism. His spiritual teacher Köbun Chino Otogawa has a crucial role in the opera as do his two significant female partners, the mother of his first child Chrisann Brennan and his wife Laurene Powell Jobs. His longtime business partner Steve “Woz” Wozniak is as present in the opera as he was in Steve Jobs’s life. There is also a chorus of scientists.
But while the operatic story covers most of the landmark moments in Jobs’s career, it focuses on his development as a person. As entrepreneur, Jobs gets caught in the grip of ambition and becomes ruthlessly harsh toward the people close to him. He forgets Otogawa’s teaching to let life happen to him, to simplify it, and not force it. Chrisann’s desperate pleas for financial help in raising their child alone are notably cruel, as we know from real-life reports. Wozniak quits in disgust and the board finally demotes Jobs.
The Zen teacher reappears to remind him that we can all learn from our difficulties and, indeed Jobs rebounds, comes up with his best ideas yet and is returned to the company. He also becomes open to love and family life.
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| Photo: Scott Suchman |
To match the story of a revolutionary man whose personal computers affected almost everyone on the planet, the composer has made some unusual musical choices. He uses a saxophone, acoustic guitar and electronic sounds as played on a Macintosh laptop, the instruments that are rarely if ever used in the traditional opera.
The score occasionally brings to mind John Adams, notably his Short Ride in a Fast Machine. At other times one hears hints of Asian beat from Puccini’s Turandot and Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy orchestrations. In one scene, Otogawa sounds decidedly like the Grand Inquisitor from Verdi’s Don Carlo in ending a phrase. While I would not describe the music as revolutionary, I found it to be the most engaging part of this opera. It always set the right mood and deepened the understanding of a scene, serving in general as the main agent of the story.
The singers were all in good voices and well suited for their role. John Moore burst on the scene with a ringing baritone that conveyed Jobs’s youthful energy. He was more convincing in his nasty stage than when he became contemplative in his afterlife.
Bass Wei Wu owns the role of spiritual advisor Köbun Chino Otogawa, his scenes almost dominating the show. Kresley Figueroa has a youthful soprano, appropriate for a bubbly and naïve young woman in love as Chrisann was when she dated Jobs.
Tenor Jonathan Burton as Wozniak gave a charismatic performance. The creation of a "blue box" that enabled making free long-distance phone calls prompted him to break into a clumsy, but charming celebratory gigue. His version of Jobs's burly partner quit more in exasperation than in anger.
Jobs’s wife Laurene seems to be the only person who has effective influence on him, although with delayed result. Winona Martin has a mellifluous soprano, suited for the role of a serene, mature woman. Unfortunately, the creators made her sound more like a nagging than supportive wife, and in the end turned her into a didactic matron. In her final lines, Laurene warns the audience to refrain from reaching for their cell phones as soon as the show is over, and recommends looking up into the sky and stars instead of Jobs's "one device."
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| Photo: Scott Suchman |
Mezzo-soprano Michelle Mariposa as Jobs’s calligraphy teacher and baritone Justin Burgess as his father Paul Jobs round up the cast in cameo roles.
Occasionally, many of these beautiful voices were drowned by the chorus or the orchestra.
Production and staging by Tomer Zvulun, revived by Rebecca Herman, was technically simple: 24 smaller screens framed by stairs and scaffoldings that allowed the performers to move upward. Together with four larger screens on each side of the stage, they served as canvas for projections, designed by S. Kathy Tucker with lighting by Robert Wierzel. The colors and patterns projected on the screens and above them swiftly changed the mood and atmosphere for each new scene.
Overall, it is understandable what may attract contemporary audiences to this opera, which has seen at least 10 new productions across the nation since its 2017 premiere. With the amplified contemporary sound, some catchy tunes and choreographed chorus movements, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is more akin to a popular American musical than a traditional opera. It’s a piece of work one can listen to at home and enjoy parts of it even without a high-tech gimmicky production. But in terms of drama, it just misses its main goal of conveying inner struggles and redemption of a flawed genius, hurtling to complete his circle of life. Do we understand Jobs any better after seeing this opera?
Laurene's cliché warnings against obsessive use of the internet make the opera's final scenes drag and the return of the birthday boy with balloons from the Prologue is plain kitch.
The piece concludes on a somewhat bombastic note, in a standard operatic tradition, inviting a burst of applause from the audience. The last performance is scheduled for May 9.
It was not clear why the WNO decided to set the premiere for Friday at 5:30 PM, forcing patrons to battle the weekend rush hour to get to the show, many of them arriving late, only to learn that the inconvenient time was chosen to accommodate the WNO's annual gala dinner. First things first.
