High-tech opera to focus on human side of Steve Jobs

SANTA FE, New Mexico — A techno-infused opera about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has earned the financial backing of opera companies in San Francisco and Seattle, ensuring the musical meditation on the iconic entrepreneur will travel to the United States’ high-tech enclave.

The partnerships were announced on Tuesday as the Santa Fe Opera prepared for its July world premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at its open-air summer stage in the foothills of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The Seattle Opera and the San Francisco Opera are underwriting both the already completed artistic creation of the opera, led by composer and electronica DJ Mason Bates, and its physical stage production. As co-producers, the companies guarantee their right to performances beyond Santa Fe in California and Washington.

Jobs’ life story, as the relentless technology pioneer who embraced Buddhism and simple vegetarian family dinners, has been the subject of documentaries, books, a feature film and a graphic novel since his death from cancer in 2011.

Sponsors of the Jobs opera are counting on Bates and librettist Mark Campbell to deliver a “deeply layered, moving portrayal of a man grappling with the complex priorities of life, family and work”, in the words of San Francisco opera General Manager Matthew Shilvock.

“He was also a real person and a member of our community,” Shilvock says of Jobs.

Charles MacKay, general director of the Santa Fe Opera, says Jobs provides the “sort of heroic, tragic figure” that operas have explored for centuries, who also may lure new and younger audiences to metropolitan opera houses.

“This is not an opera about technology, although it will be the highest technology production that we’ve ever done. It is an opera about relationships, and it is an opera about human frailties,” MacKay says.