A Steve Jobs opera?!

[John F]

Well, that's one way to get a new audience...

A Steve Jobs Opera Is Up Next for the Santa Fe Company
By ZACHARY WOOLFE
AUG. 6, 2015

SANTA FE, N.M. — Just don’t call it iOpera. The Santa Fe Opera has announced that its next commissioned work will be “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,” with music by Mason Bates, known for combining electronic sounds and traditional instruments, and a libretto by Mark Campbell.

With its premiere here planned for the summer of 2017, the opera will take an intensely personal look at Mr. Jobs, the technology visionary who co-founded Apple and died in 2011, and his family relationships, as well as his practice of Zen Buddhism. The work seeks, according to a news release from Santa Fe Opera, “to capture the buzzing creative realm of Silicon Valley with a kinetic electroacoustic score, lush vocal writing, a compelling nonlinear narrative and a production as innovative as the man himself.”

Kevin Newbury will direct the Santa Fe production, which will receive its first workshop in September in San Francisco, and Michael Christie will conduct.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/arts/ ... mpany.html

[Auntie Lynn]

Well, they did Klinghoffer, Nixon, Harvey Milk, Anna Nicole, etc. etc. Why not Stevie - my guess is that nobody is going to leave the performance humming anything...

[John F]

All those others had sensational lives, or deaths - the making of drama. Not so Steve Jobs. Looks like a yawn to me.

[karlhenning]

Nerdgasm goes to the Opera.

[jserraglio]

I think Jobs had a pretty dramatic life and death. Life-affirming, death-denying. The Met should have had him running the show, the "Ring machine" would never have taken center stage.

[John F]

Dramatic? What do you mean? As for his death, from pancreatic cancer, nothing dramatic about that, it just happened - we're not talking about Violetta, whose fatal illness is central to the story.

[maestrob]

Nerdgasm goes to the Opera.

[jserraglio]

Dramatic? What do you mean? As for his death, from pancreatic cancer, nothing dramatic about that, it just happened - we're not talking about Violetta, whose fatal illness is central to the story.

Reality bending. Central to Jobs's considerable accomplishments. And ironically and tragically, also central to his death. Could make a nice dramatic opera.