The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs
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| Title: | The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs |
Steve Jobs at WWDC (2010) |
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| Shape: | Opera in a prologue, eighteen scenes and an epilogue |
| Original language: | English |
| Music: | Mason Bates |
| Libretto : | Mark Campbell |
| Premiere: | July 22, 2017 |
| Place of premiere: | Santa Fe Opera |
| Playing time: | approx. 1 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | USA, 1965-2011 |
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The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs is an opera in a prologue, eighteen scenes and an epilogue by Mason Bates (music) with a libretto by Mark Campbell . It premiered on July 22, 2017 at the Santa Fe Opera .
action
Prologue - 1965: Jobs family garage, Los Altos
For his birthday Steve receives a self-made workbench from his father Paul (Paul: "I built this table").
overture
Scene 1 - 2007: Product launch, stage of a convention center in San Francisco
Steve asks those present to turn off their old phones. After his speech, they'll want to throw this "old garbage" away anyway. His new product combines all possible functions in "one device" and can be held in one hand (Steve and Ensemble: "One device"). After the demonstration, he goes to his office and sits down, exhausted.
Scene 2 - 2007: Immediately afterwards; Company office in Cupertino
Steve's wife Laurene teasingly greets her husband. Then she warns him not to overwork. The children, and sometimes they too, would miss him. Steve consoles her by saying that he only needs a walk to clear his head.
Meditative interlude
While Steve meditates in the slow Kinhin , a projection of an Enso drawing appears.
Scene 3 - 2007: Later that afternoon; Hill around Cupertino
Steve meets Kōbun Chino Otogawa , his former spiritual advisor. Kōbun confronts Steve with his mortality. Steve remembers some of his lessons in Zen Buddhism.
Scene 4 - 1973: A calligraphy class in Reed College , Oregon
A teacher explains the different meanings of Ensō to his class, which also includes Steve: Enlightenment, elegance, the universe, emptiness, nature, grace, freedom, simplicity.
Scene 5 - 1973: Jobs family garage, Los Altos
Steve's friend “Woz” ( Steve Wozniak ) shows him his “blue box” with which he can hack into the telephone network to make free calls. He immediately establishes a connection with Henry Kissinger and the Vatican. The two are happy about how easily one can cheat big companies (Steve and Woz: "Ma Bell").
Scene 6 - 1974: An apple orchard near Los Altos
Steve tries LSD with his girlfriend Chrisann . When the effect starts, they kiss (Chrisann: "I could learn to like you"). For Steve, the plants seem to turn into musical instruments and play Bach . Just as the two are about to begin intimacy, they are interrupted by Kōbun.
Scene 7 - 2007: The hills around Cupertino / 1975: The Los Altos Zen Center
Kōbun compares the Ensō to a ticking clock and recalls their first encounter in 1975 at the Los Altos Zen Center. Steve wanted to become a monk at the time, but Kōbun pointed out that he had another way ahead of him (Kōbun: "Take one step").
Scene 8 - 1989: A classroom, Stanford University
During one of his lectures, Steve met his future wife Laurene.
Scene 9 - 1976: Jobs family garage, Los Altos
Woz is doggedly working on a new computer interface. When he's finished and wants to celebrate with Steve, Chrisann comes in. She takes Steve aside and tells him that she is pregnant. Steve tells her to have the child aborted - he'll never acknowledge it. Chrisann leaves the garage horrified. As if nothing had happened, Steve turns back to Woz and his work. He thinks one of his friends can make a beautiful case out of Koa wood. A keyboard, a screen and the ability to output audio are also missing. That reminds him of the imaginary Bach music in the orchard (Steve Jobs: "Something we play").
Scene 10 - 1989: Steve Jobs' home, Palo Alto
Laurene visits Steve at his apartment for the first time. Because there is hardly any furniture, she initially thinks he has only just moved in. She admires some photographs by Ansel Adams and quotes them with the sentence “I can look at good art photography, and sometimes I hear music.” Laurene advises him to listen to music when he is working. The two go to bed together.
Scene 11 - 1980: Company office, Cupertino
Steve explains his ideas of a simple device design (“one button”) to his employees. When Chrisann comes in, he coldly informs her that he no longer wants to be with her. Woz asks Steve in vain to help a former employee who is in financial distress. While Steve turns back to his design concept, Chrisann and Woz complain about how much he has changed (Steve, Chrisann and Woz: "Losing it").
Interlude - the rise and fall of Steve Jobs
Video projections show Steve's rise in business. He himself walks from room to room in his company and becomes increasingly aggressive towards his employees.
Scene 12 - 1981–1986: Company office, Cupertino
The employees complain about Steve's unsatisfactory claims. You long for a change in company management. Steve insists on his ideas (Steve: "Wrong"). In between he refuses to pay maintenance for his and Chrisann's daughter Lisa, because she is "not his child" and not his problem. During a telephone interview about his daughter, an employee asks him for a name for the new computer model. In confusion, he gives the employee a piece of paper with the name " Lisa " and explains that it means "'Logic Interface ... System ...' whatever". Shortly afterwards, there is a dispute with Woz, who then leaves the company (Woz: "Goliath"). The board of directors tells Steve that due to poor business performance, he will be transferred based on his wrong decisions. He resigns angrily.
Dark interlude
Steve collapses in a fit of anger.
Scene 13 - 2007: The hills around Cupertino
Kōbun points out his mistakes to Steve. “Simplify” doesn't mean “be selfish”. He confused “want” with “love” and died his first death. But in the ten years after starting over, he did his best job and met Laurene.
Scene 14 - 2007: The Hills around Cupertino / 1989: A lecture hall, Stanford University
During the conversation with Kōbun, Steve remembers his first meeting with Laurene ...
Scene 15 - 2007: The Hills around Cupertino / 1989: Steve Jobs' home, Palo Alto
... and the first evening in his apartment when he fell in love with her. Kōbun points out that Laurene has always made sure that he does not fall back into his old habits.
Scene 16 - 2007: Later that night; Steve Jobs' home, Palo Alto
After his walk, Steve returns to his apartment, where Laurene is anxiously waiting for him. She insists that he must take care of his health. He is not one of his machines and should not ignore his illness and mortality (Laurene: "Humans are messy"). You can only stand by him if he accepts that he has to change. Steve promises her to go to the doctor.
Scene 17 - 1991: The Wedding, Yosemite National Park - Lyrical Interlude
The interlude shows the Buddhist ceremony in which Kōbun wed Steve and Laurene. As the scene freezes over and over, Steve recounts that they had three children and adopted a fourth (Lisa), how much he owed Laurene over the 18 years of their marriage, and that Kōbun drowned trying to save his own child in 2002. You will remember his teaching that there is only one certainty in life.
Scene 18 - 2011: The memorial service; Stanford University Chapel
In a vision, Steve sees his own funeral ceremony. When he criticized some details, Kōbun admonished him to be calm and "simplify". Laurene and Woz remember his life. After the guests and a little later Woz have left, Laurene ponders his spiritual legacy (Laurene: “Look up, look out, look around”).
Epilogue - 1965: Jobs family garage, Los Altos
Laurene watches as young Steve receives the workbench from his father - "a good place to start".
layout
The composer Mason Bates named Steve Jobs' search for inner peace as the main theme of the opera, in which his wife Laurene played the key role by reminding him of the importance of real human contact. Steve had the “charisma of a visionary similar to Jesus” through his inner energy, but could quickly become a “cold tyrant”. Another important role is assigned to Steve's spiritual mentor, Kōbun. In addition, there are two people, Woz and Chrisann, who have known Steve for a long time and who have witnessed his “stunning transformation”. The plot is not told chronologically in a linear fashion, but jumps back and forth between the different stages of Steve's life. The stage directions given in the libretto refer to influences from Japanese Nō theater. In many cases, the characters stay on stage even in scenes in which they are not involved by sitting on a bench to the side.
As a young man Jobs received inspiration from Zen , minimalism and calligraphy , but the concrete meaning of the Enso used centrally in the opera is an addition to the authors. It not only serves as a symbol for Steve's design principles, his long walks, Chrisann's pregnancy and his relationship with Laurene, but also as a replacement for the Apple logo and other proprietary design elements.
The final scene with the memorial service observed by Steve and Kōbun, who had already died at this point, explains the title word "(R) evolution". Steve's development in the course of the opera - first to the negative and then to the positive - is an "evolution" (English for "development"). At the same time, it is a "revolution" (English for "rotation" or "circulation") in the sense that Steve returns to the beginning at the end - but the meaning of the action in between changes.
music
The music consists of clearly separated numbers. There are recitatives, arias and ensemble movements. According to his own statement, the composer transferred the concept of the Wagnerian leitmotifs in "soundworlds". Each character is not only assigned a theme, but a complete “sound identity” (“an entire sonic identity”). When several people meet, their sounds merge, similar to how a DJ would mix them. A “mercury” mixture of orchestral and electronic sounds is assigned to the character of Steve Jobs. The latter were partly generated with the help of samples from Macintosh hardware in order to achieve a certain “authenticity” - for example the buzz of a hard drive or clicks on a keyboard. Steve is also accompanied by an acoustic guitar, as he particularly appreciated this instrument and the sound represents the "inner world of a restless man" well. The music of Laurene contrasts with this. It is characterized by “slow-moving, oceanic harmonies”. The deep “mystical bass” from Steve's spiritual mentor Kōbun is in the tradition of Sarastro from Mozart's Magic Flute . It is accompanied by Tibetan prayer bowls and Chinese gongs, some of which are electronically distorted. During Wozniak's performances, two saxophones can be heard with Chrisann's "hummingbird-like" flutes.
Work history
The American composer Mason Bates (born 1977) was best known for symphonic music, which he enriched with electronic sounds. In 2014/2015 he was second in the list of the most frequently performed living composers. In 2012 he received the Heinz Award in the “Arts and Humanities” category. The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs is his first opera. It was commissioned by Santa Fe Opera , Seattle Opera, and San Francisco Opera . Indiana University Bloomington's Jacobs School of Music was also involved in the production. The work was created without the involvement of Jobs' family or company and was not authorized by them. The name of the company Apple is therefore missing in the sung text.
The libretto was written by Mark Campbell, who wrote more than fifteen opera librettos in 2017. His opera Silent Night (composer: Kevin Puts ) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2012. Campbell wrote that when he began working on the libretto, he read and saw everything he could find about Steve Jobs. The episodes about the workbench he received from his father, his interest in Japanese minimalism, his studies with Kōbun Chino Otogawa and many other details found their way into the text. The finished libretto was structurally only slightly different from the first sketches he submitted to Bates. However, at his request, he made a number of text changes that made Steve's character more personable.
The world premiere took place on July 22, 2017 under the direction of conductor Michael Christie in the Crosby Theater of the Santa Fe Opera. The director was Kevin Newbury, the stage was by Victoria "Vita" Tzykun, the costumes by Paul Carey, the lighting design by Japhy Weideman and the projections by 59 productions. Kelly Markgraf (Paul), Edward Parks (Steve), Sasha Cooke (Laurene), Wei Wu (Kōbun), Mariya Kaganskaya (teacher), Garrett Sorenson (Woz), Jessica E. Jones (Chrisann) sang.
The production was such a great success that an additional performance was offered. The Pentatone label also released a CD. Opernwelt magazine wrote:
“The text by librettist Mark Campbell combines wit and spice with greeting card-compatible sentences of the kind that the driven, often cruel Jobs had repeatedly received from his Buddhist mentor […] and his wife Laurene […]. [...] The structure of the whole thing is based on the aesthetics of the short attention span, and the 'user-friendly' music fits in with this. "
Compared to the other characters, however, the rather weak musical material of the title character was criticized, whose vocal line conveyed "neither the genius nor the bite of the technical and marketing genius".
The New York Times reviewer criticized Steve Jobs for having a different character at the beginning and at the end of the opera than during the course of the plot. This does not correspond to the reality, since according to most contemporary witnesses Jobs was “charismatically intolerable” all his life and forgot the Buddhist teachings of his youth. The opera is "caught between their efforts to tick off the biographical facts and untruthfully transform this biography into the form of a romance with a happy ending". The CD reviewer for the British magazine Gramophone called the opera “an ambitious work, although there are notable deficiencies in both the dramaturgy and the score”. The Hopkins Review reviewer was delighted with the staging and quality of the performance. She particularly emphasized the effectiveness of the “One Device” choir in presenting the iPhone.
In September 2018, the world premiere production with the ensemble of the Jacobs School of Music was played in the Musical Arts Center of Indiana University Bloomington. Videos of two performances were made available on the Internet.
Recordings
- July / August 2017 - Michael Christie (conductor), Santa Fe Opera Orchestra , members of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers.
Kelly Margrave (Paul), Edward Parks (Steve), Sasha Cooke (Laurene), Wei Wu (Kōbun), Mariya Kaganskaya (teacher), Garrett Sorenson (Woz), Jessica E. Jones (Chrisann).
Recording of the world premiere production from the Crosby Theater Santa Fe.
Pentatone PTC5186690 (2 CDs). - 15./22. September 2018 - Michael Christie (conductor), Kevin Newbury (director), Victoria "Vita" Tzykun (stage), Paul Carey (costumes), Japhy Weideman (lighting design), orchestra and choir of the Jacobs School of Music.
Zachary Smith / Nick Farmer (Paul), Jeremy Weiss / Edward Cleary (Steve), Amanda Perera / Courtney Jameson (Laurene), Julian Michel Morris / David D. Lee (Kōbun), Emily Warren (teacher), Joseph McBrayer / Gregory McClelland (Woz), Michelle Lerch / Nicola Santoro (Chrisann), Jake Sater (young Steve).
Video; Staging of the world premiere production; live from the Indiana University Bloomington Musical Arts Center ; Recordings of two performances with different vocal cast.
Video streams on the Indiana University Bloomington website.
Web links
- Booklet of the CD Pentatone PTC5186690 (PDF) with libretto in English
Remarks
- ^ "I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I hear music."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Voices after the cast of the premiere.
- ^ A b Mason Bates: The Music of Communication. In: Booklet of the CD Pentatone PTC5186690, pp. 12-15.
- ^ A b c d Matthew Van Vleet: Program Notes. In: Program for the performance of the Jacobs School of Music (PDF) , accessed on October 26, 2018.
- ^ A b Johanna Keller: New Opera in Santa Fe: The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs. Review of the world premiere production. In: The Hopkins Review. Volume 10, Number 4, Fall 2017, pp. 633–636, doi : 10.1353 / thr.2017.0119 .
- ^ By the Numbers: Living Composers. on bsomusic.org, accessed October 26, 2018.
- ^ The Heinz Awards - Mason Bates , accessed October 26, 2018.
- ↑ a b c d Booklet of the CD Pentatone PTC5186690.
- ↑ a b c d David Shengold, Wiebke Roloff (transl.): Guaranteed user-friendly. Review of the world premiere production. In: Opera world . September / October 2017, p. 40.
- ^ A b Zachary Woolfe: Review: Steve Jobs of Apple, Tech Visionary, Has Glitches as an Opera. Review of the world premiere production. In: The New York Times . July 23, 2017, accessed October 27, 2018.
- ↑ Stephen Raskauskas: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Librettist Mark Campbell Explains How to Write an Opera on wfmt.com. May 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2018.
- ^ Mark Campbell: The Evolution of (R) evolution. In: Booklet of the CD Pentatone PTC5186690, pp. 16-19.
- ↑ Tim Ashley: BATES The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs. Review of the CD Pentatone PTC5186690. In: Gramophone . 9/2018, accessed on October 27, 2018.
- ↑ a b Performance information from Indiana University Bloomington's Jacobs School of Music , accessed October 26, 2018.
- ↑ 2018–19 season. Video streams on the Indiana University Bloomington website.